Forget the Possible. Dominate the art of the Impossible.

One minute of pushups. How many? (Answer: 26. Annoyed with myself. I’d done 31 the day before.)

Wall-sit. Sitting upright with your back against a wall, holding yourself up with your legs, nothing under your backside. That’s a killer. My legs were spasming Richter 7.2.

How long? (Answer: 1 minute, 45 seconds, but that was 15 seconds better than the day before, so I was pleased. The ladies outperformed the guys on this one. By quite a margin. Interesting.)

And so on, and so on. Eight of ‘em.

By the end, I was reasonably happy. I biked home, thighs still screaming. And went out for another bike ride with the family in the evening. The old bod is reminding me of how I abused it yesterday.

What is The Possible?

Answer:

How much pain can you stand before you quit?

(Key idea there: Answer a question with a better question. Always a good move.)

I was never a jock as a kid. I come from a family of geeks, not jocks. We do black boxes, not black belts.

This was partly exacerbated by Crohn’s Disease.

All through high school, I was plagued by recurring gut cramps.

Painfully thin. Easily outclassed in any physical activity. This included anything up to and including physical violence, so I was easily bullied and pushed around. I learned to avoid certain people, and to diffuse conflict before it threatened to become more than verbal.

My weight problem was always keeping my weight UP.

Even as a university student, just a hair under 6 feet tall, I weighed around 135 lbs.

By age 21, the Crohn’s had been diagnosed, and I was ill.

really ill.

In the spring semester of my final year of mechanical engineering, I wound up in Toronto General Hospital for 7 weeks. I got out two weeks before final exams. Nearly didn’t graduate.

So for most of my life, the idea of defending myself, or of excelling at any physical exercise . . . was beyond the realm of the possible. Far, FAR beyond.

It was The Impossible.

It wasn’t helped by something in the soul.

Hard to articulate this. Not because I don’t wanna. The words are just . . . missing.

There was something running through my head, 24/7, that said . . . . 

Don’t you get too big for your britches, little fella.

That's all you are, anyway. A little fella.

Don’t make us have to take you down a peg or two.

See that box you’re living in? It’s a nice little box. We’ve made it just for you. You stay in it. 

Don’t ask for too much. Don’t try to rise above your station. Nothing but trouble will result if you do.

I do not know where that thread came from. But it was running through my brain all the time growing up.

It ran through my parents’ heads as well. And probably through theirs.

I wasn't taught to think that way. But I learned it nevertheless.

Why did I allow this nasty little monster into my head?

My great-grandfather knew about his own nasty little monster.

Early setback in life. Born in Northamptonshire, he was age two, his mother pregnant with his brother, when his father dies of tuberculosis.

Not good 

This was late Victorian era.

Women depended on a father or a husband to provide for them, and there was no Plan B.

She was now left with a terrible decision to make.

My great-grandfather ended up being put into an orphanage, while she “went into service” . . . . as it was called . . . . for the rest of her life, generating just enough money to keep her and her unborn child alive.

Family records here are sketchy. Old Pop (as my great-gramps was called) was educated at a boys' school in Dover, where the school practice was to dip in the English Channel every morning.

Winter and summer. 

The English Channel? You know? The one connected to the Atlantic Ocean?

Been for a dip in the Atlantic lately? Seen the last few scenes of Titanic?

Graduating from school, the headmaster gave him a Bible, handwriting in it that he had “a first-class education and a thoroughly good character”.

A few years later, he’s in Cuckfield, Sussex, where he’s somehow been apprenticed as a carpenter, and married to a woman ten years his senior.

Ten. Years.

And he's having to tip his cap to every “gennelman or lady” who passes. Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir.

And it’s around this point that something in him snaps. 

TWANG!

In 1910, with two small boys, and the promise of free land in Canada, they board a liner for Montreal.

Goodbye green and pleasant land. Pity you weren’t greener and pleasanter to me.

A train west, and he spends the rest of his life in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. First as a carpenter, and then he gets into real estate. Does well enough to buy and rent out several houses, buy a summer cottage on Manitou Lake, and put my grandfather through university. 

Not too shabby for an orphan from Northamptonshire. He’d not have managed that if he’d stayed put.

I was raised on accounts of his funny antics and one-liners. Particularly about his exacting, exquisite recipe for preparing cucumbers for dinner.

(The details vary depending on who tells the story, but the finale was always the same:

He threw the cucumbers, which he despised, out the window.)

Dad always affectionately referred to him as Old Pop, saying that he was a great friend to a young boy. 

Well, go figure. Determined to give his grandson what he himself never had.

But for some reason, one now-obvious fact about him was never emphasized to me:

He was a maverick

He refused to just accept the hand he was dealt. 

Don’t tell me what’s Possible. Your definition stinks. I’m gonna find out for myself. I deserve better than the hand I’ve been dealt.

When I hit my forties, two things happened to me:

(1) I turned forty.

Funny how that focuses the mind. Bummer. This might be the second half I’m playing in now. Hmmmm.

(2) I lost my dad.

Literally, on my fortieth birthday, I bid him farewell, and boarded the plane back to England.

Worst birthday I’ve ever had. A month later, I was back to bury him.

My dad was not a maverick. There were lots of things he wanted to do, to study, to try . . . .

Things that he Never. Went. After.

And then the ref blew his whistle. Match end.

With the party in full swing . . . .

. . . . the star of the party checks out with half his presents unopened. 

What a bloody tragedy.

A few years later, I'm sitting in the local sport centre, waiting for my daughters to finish their dance classes one night.

I look through the window into the gym, and watch Master Ray Gayle train his Tae Kwon Do students, as I had many times before.

Memories of my dad and of my own schoolday bullying experiences came a-flooding.

What if? 

What if?

What if The Possible isn’t where I think it is?

What if the universe actually extends beyond the limits of our solar system? What if the universe is still expanding?

(Hint: It does, and it is. Google it. The answer will make your head hurt, but google it anyway.)

What if a pencil-necked geek could actually become . . . . a Black Belt?

Fast forward ten years, and two things are clear:

(1) The answer is yes. (And as of yesterday, I’m working towards my 2nd Dan.)

(2) The Possible is way, way bigger than I thought it was. But you don’t get to find that out until you reach your hand out, to push. And then reach further, and still further . . .

What I thought was the outer edge of the universe, was only Saturn.

‘Impossible’ isn’t a fact, says Tony Robbins. It’s an opinion.

Forget the Art of The Possible.

Practise, nay, dominate . . . . the Art of The Impossible.