Impossible is *something*

This sort of thing really annoys me:

(From Brooke @ The Guppy Fish via You're Terrible, Muriel)

Image text:

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given, than to explore the power they have to change it.   Impossible is not a fact.   It's an opinion.   Impossible is not a declaration.   it's a dare.   Impossible is potential.   Impossible is temporary.

Impossible is nothing.

It annoys me because it's bullshit.   It annoys me because it reeks of privilege, of snobbery, of victim-blaming, of "boot-strap" economics and "ethics", of looking down on others.

It annoys me because some things are impossible, regardless of how strongly you want them not to be.

I saw a post recently (and at present I seem to be unable to find it again to give proper credit) written by a person with disabilities, ranging about the privileged outlook of a friend of hers who believed that everything is just a matter of willpower, and thinking something so will make it so.   A version of the, "you can overcome anything if you put your mind to it!" attitude.   And of course, this comes across as an implicit criticism of PWD if they don't just think themselves able to walk/see/hear /whatever their difference from the norm may be.

I'm in a warpath-y kind of mood right now.   So, let's take the above, line-by-line, and I'll show you why each line angers me, why each line sends waves of revulsion down my spine at the privilege and victim-blaming that's going on here.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given, than to explore the power they have to change it.

The underlying assumption in this, the thing that really bugs me, that annoys me, and that shrieks of victim-blaming, of arrogance and of moral superiority, is simply this: the assumption that people who say something is impossible have failed to make an effort to do it.

The assumption that men and women who say "impossible" have not explored the power they have to change the world, and yet found that their power is insufficient to overcome whatever it is that makes a thing impossible.

The assumption that the person saying "impossible" has not sweated blood - indeed, has not literally bled blood, in challenging, testing, trying to change the world we live in.   Has not strained every sinew, pressed hir whole body weight into service, every ounce of willpower, in trying to change the world.   And sometimes the effort is metal, and sometimes it's physical, and sometimes it's emotional.   But at the end of it all, sometimes, the result is the same: the world stays stubbornly as it was, and you are broken, exhausted - in some cases, (literally or figuratively) dead.

Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion.

An opinion very often backed up by masses of evidence and experience.   All of science is essentially just "an opinion".   But it is an opinion based on huge amounts of the best available evidence, the best available tests, and the best available knowledge and thinking.   Science tells us that (in natural space, anyway) it is impossible to reach the speed of light (unless one has zero at-rest mass, like a photon).   That, too, may be proved to be "opinion" rather than "fact", but at the moment it's a very compelling opinion.

Impossible is not a declaration. it's a dare.

Do you know what typically happens to people who accept dares?   They get hurt.   They get damaged.   Sometimes, they get dead.

Also via You're Terrible, Muriel, this gem:

(From Maluna @ Joie De Vivre)

Image text: Don't be afraid to fail.   Be afraid not to try.

Is it okay to be afraid of the consequences of failing, though?   Is it, perhaps, okay to decide that, all-in-all, the costs of failing make it not worthwhile trying (given the risk of failing)?

Or should I be unafraid to try flying off a cliff by flapping my arms?   Because, between you and me, I suspect that I would fail, and that the consequence of that would be that my innards make a funny Rorschach pattern on the floor below.   Am I allowed to be afraid of that?   And if I am, then where do we set the marker for, "Up to this point, be afraid not to try.   Beyond this point, it's okay to be afraid to fail"?   Or should we, perhaps, leave it up to each individual to decide at what point the fear of (the consequences of) failure should outweigh the fear of not trying?

Impossible is potential.   Impossible is temporary.

As that great philosopher Henry's Cat once said, "If at first you don't succeed, try failing."   Sometimes success comes in finding ways to cope with the impossible, and in that way our potential is fulfilled.   However, I suspect that the above line means instead something like, "Something that is 'impossible' is merely 'potentially possible'."   Which is great, but if it takes, say, 100 years for that potential to be realised, I'll be dead by the time it happens.   It may be "temporary", in that eventually the impossibility would be banished, but for someone facing the challenges now, it remains impossible, and will for the rest of their lives.   To that person, it is not temporary.

Impossible is nothing.

Impossible is nothing if you are rich, White, (temporarily) able-bodied, neurotypical, cissexual, heterosexual, etc.   Impossible is nothing if you are lucky.

For a lot of people, though, impossible is something that they experience as a real, physical, social barrier to their existence.   As an example, for a PWD in a wheelchair, impossible is getting up to the top of a flight of stairs when there's no disabled access provision.   For a person suffering from depression, impossible can be finding anything in the world to brighten the day (because the neurology actually causes everything to seem duller and less engaging).   For a trans person, impossible can be getting other people to accept them as their true gender (and not the gender assigned-at-birth) and in some (far too many) cases, impossible can be living through the hate-filled attack on their bodies.

For many people who conform to the normative standards of sex, gender, sexuality, body, etc there are things that they find beyond their ability.   Things that are impossible.

People take the stories of those who have been in horrific accidents and are told that they will never walk again, but who somehow manage to recover use of their legs, and they think that that proves that "impossible is nothing".   We never hear of the people, and they do exist, who had similar injuries, who put in just as much effort, but who did not recover sufficiently to be able to live without mobility aids.   Sometimes, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference how much you believe something, how much you want it, how hard you work to get it.   It just isn't going to happen.   It is impossible.

Only the lucky and privileged get to believe that "impossible is nothing".

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ETA: there was a third privilege-imbued "PMA" saying posted at You're Terrible Muriel, it didn't completely fit in with this post but I added my snarky comment at my Tumblr instead and thought people might want to reflect on that as well!