This week, when I came across this story I immediately felt that it merited my sharing it with you.
I believe it was Henry Ford who originated the popular saying, “Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” This is the internal human battleground wherein success and failure have waged war for supremacy throughout the ages.
Mahatma Gandhi put it succinctly when he said, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
Perhaps we as a society should endeavor with equal fervor to eliminate the words CAN’T and IMPOSSIBLE from our lexicon as we do the effort to remove from our discourse any words that can be even remotely perceived to be offensive or limiting to anyone. Instead of embracing the ideology of being sensitive to any and all of our limitations, let us teach, celebrate and be inspired by the many real stories that abound throughout our world of “limited” individuals such Jessica Cox, who rise above their societally perceived limitations and who, through their indomitable spirit and drive, embrace and achieve whatever they dream to be by believing only in what they can do…not what they can’t.
Cox, 25, born without arms, stands inside an aircraft. The girl from Tucson, Arizona got her Sport Pilot certificate and became the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet. Jessica was born without arms, but that has only stopped her from doing one thing: using the word “can’t.”
Already the holder of two black belts in Taekwondo, Jessica’s latest flight into the seemingly impossible was becoming the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet.
With one foot manning the controls and the other delicately guiding the steering column, Cox soared to achieve her license to fly. Her certificate qualifies her to fly a light-sport aircraft to altitudes of 10,000 feet.
She’s a good pilot. She’s rock solid,” said Parrish Traweek, her flying instructor at Tucon’s San Manuel’s Ray Blair Airport. Traweek runs PC Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Services and has trained many pilots, some of whom didn’t come close to Cox’s abilities.
“When she came up here driving a car,” he recalled, “I knew she’d have no problem flying a plane.”
Doctors never learned why she was born without arms, but she figured out early on that she didn’t want to use prosthetic devices. So, the next time you are ready to tell yourself, “I can’t possibly…” remember this amazing young woman and change your vocabulary.
Excerpt from the script of Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980):
SCENE: Luke can’t levitate his X-Wing out of the bog
Luke: I can’t. It’s too big.
Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
If you found Jessica’s story inspiring and want more, the URL below will take you to a YouTube video about Richie Parker, another individual born without arms who has designed and lived his life according to the precept that there is nothing in life that he can’t do, only things that he hasn’t done yet. It’s about 8 minutes in length, but well worth watching. Enjoy and…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvZssjaEpE&feature=player_detailpage
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’