To boldly go where no man has gone before.
The words of Captain Kirk at the start of every episode of the original Star Trek.
His and his crew’s boldly would be to undertake a five year mission into the deepest uncharted areas of space to discover new worlds. A trek that had not been achieved before. While that is just a TV series, achieving the previously unachievable truly is mind over matter. Or anti-matter if you are on the Starship Enterprise.
Mount Everest stands 8,849 metres high. The highest mountain in the world. To date 7269 climbers have summited at the top of the world on the mountain. But, it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the first time it was conquered there had been some 14 expeditions that had attempted to reach the top but all failed. It was considered too difficult, too dangerous, and unachievable.
Then along came Edmund Hilary. He was having none of it. On May 1953 he achieved the unachievable and became the first person to successfully climb the highest peak above sea level on Earth.
People were amazed. He was asked many times not just how he did it but most of all, why. His immortal reply, ‘Because it was there’. The comment was in honour of British climber George Mallory who tried to mount Everest in 1924 but was never seen again. He had been asked the same question back then and gave the same and original response.
Why aim to achieve the unachievable in anything? Because it’s a personal belief that a) it is possible and b) that they are the person to do it.
Shoot for the Moon.
There is another famous belief quote from Norman Vincent Peale which goes, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars’, In short, have huge thinking and belief in it and yourself.
That was something flowing through a young student at Purdue University in Indiana, USA in the last 1940’s. A teacher had begun asking students gathered in class what they aimed to have as their career when they completed their studies. The usual replies (for the time) centred around becoming a bank manager, setting up a restaurant, opening a haulage business and other accepted ‘good living’ roles for the future such as lawyer or real estate agent.
Finally the question arrived at the young student. His reply…..
‘I’m going to land on the Moon’.
The class broke out into heaps of laughter. The other students ridiculed the young man and the teacher rounded it all off with the words….
‘Neil Armstrong, you have to learn that if you want to have any sensible future at all, you will need to come back down to Earth pretty quickly’.
Imagine hearing that. To most people this public humiliation would have ended their goal then and there. But not Neil Armstrong. In his mind that unachievable feat was very achievable. Just because 1940’s contemporary minds and technological know-how had felt it beyond human capabilities, Armstrong strongly believed it was only a matter of time in the years that followed that the answers would be found. And he was going to be right there involved so he could lead the way.
That school laughter turned to worldwide cheers and admiration when he touched down and walked on the Moon surface twenty years later. All that his mind felt true HAD come true. The unachievable to everyone, had been achieved as he said it would. As the old adage goes, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it’.
So, maybe it’s time you climbed your own metaphorical mountain in life. Or reached for your own moon.
Because that IS what achieve-meant!
PS; The story about Neil Armstrong was actually told to me AT Purdue University on one of my two visits.