
Those words resonated deeply with me, because I had just
been pondering the same thought. Not
learning to shoot a bow and arrow, despite the influence of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger
Games; no, I’m talking about the ‘figuring out a way’ part.
When it comes to writing, one of my Big Problems for many
years was finishing what I started. I
had no shortage of great ideas for things to write about, whether it was sci-fi
epics or small, personal stories and poems.
I always had twenty or thirty great concepts swirling amorphously in my
head at any given time. But whenever I
sat down and actually started writing, I would quickly lose traction, and
before long the wheels would start spinning instead of turning. I inevitably hit the 10% barrier, which is
where you fly through the first 10% of the work on pure inspiration, but then
find yourself facing the remaining 90% with little but hard work in front of
you. I loved to write, but I didn’t love
to work. That’s just about the time when
one of my other great ideas would suddenly entrance me, drawing me irresistibly
to it with its sure-fire charms. I would
abandon the ship I believed was foundering in favor of the new, shiny-looking
one with an engine so big you think it will carry you all the way home in style
and comfort, only to discover that the tank is only 1/10th full,
with nothing more than a pair of oars after that.
From the beginning and all throughout, I’ve been asking myself
one basic question: Can I do it? Can I write this thing in my head into
existence? Can I?
And with each vampiristic change of hosts, the question became
bigger, and the answer got farther and farther away.
This was my purgatorial existence as a writer since I first
sat down at my mom’s manual typewriter to write my first novel at the age of
nine. And I’ve only recently begun to
make progress.
I know I’m making progress because I was standing in the
kitchen the other night, and I suddenly realized that some small but
significant shift must have taken place in me since I started the blog. At some point, without even knowing it
consciously, I had stopped asking the question, ‘Can I do this?’, and was instead
asking myself, ‘How am I going to do this?’
It may seem like a fairly small semantic difference, but the
implications were profound. It was a warm
and slightly staggering moment of epiphany.
I don’t know when it happened, or how. But as I thought about the work that I’ve
done over the last nine months or so, I saw that when I had what I thought was
a great idea, I had been figuring out ways to write it into existence. Not perfectly, by any means, but successfully;
in fact, almost always more successfully than I had anticipated.
And that’s why Jeff Fabry’s words resonated so profoundly in
my head about an hour or so later when I was watching the news and saw his
story. Here’s a guy who had to overcome
the challenge of losing his right arm and leg in order to do something he
loved. He didn’t ask, “Can I do
it?” At least, he didn’t stay there. His focus settled on figuring out a way to do
it. The truly important question was not
whether he could; it was how he could. Asking
‘how’ not only allows for the existence of possibility; it acknowledges, it
presumes, it demands it. ‘Can’ doesn’t.
Changing the question changes the equation.
Even more amazing is that, in all likelihood, Jeff Fabry became
a better archer than he would have been had he not lost his limbs. Isn’t that crazy? He turned himself into an archery champion, a
world-class competitor. Would he have
put the time and energy into attaining such a high level of mastery if he had
been able to take his body for granted?
How likely is it that he would have been better than he is right now if he had not
had to overcome that incredible obstacle?
Unfortunately, he wasn’t asked that question in the interview, but we
can look at our own lives to divine the answer.
The example of Jeff Fabry, and maybe in some way my own comparatively
miniscule one, prove that we are all capable of tremendous change. Obstacles may stop or prevent us from achieving
our goals directly, but all obstacles are finite. Our creativity, our desire to find a way, and
our faith, are not. When they are fused
together, they are capable of not only taking us past the obstacle, but raising
us to new heights, heights we couldn’t have even imagined for ourselves before.

You just changed my mind about law school. Thank you Thunderstrokes!
ReplyDeleteThat's great to hear! Please don't sue me.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great reminder! Very inspiring, not just your subject (Jeff Fabry) but your words. I am going to use this as an inspiration for my weight loss classes.
ReplyDeleteOr to sum it up in the words of Larry the Cable Guy "Get 'er done!"
Or Nike: Just do it. Good luck; I know that losing weight can be a confounding challenge for anyone.
Delete