Gordon W. Gahan: Taking no notice of a troublesome right shoulder, New York Yankee star Mickey Mantle manages a "thumbs up" sign as he overlooks the Mayo Clinic from his hotel room here on January 17th. The champion slugger will undergo nearly a week of tests at the clinic to see if the shoulder can be fixed up. Before starting on the grueling series of examinations, Mantle remarked, "It isn't sore, but I can't throw with it." (January 1966)

"I must be dealing with a true impossible here."

My senses usually keep me safe from directly experiencing many of the more terrifying realities. It's true that I'm hurling through space on a corkscrewing planet moving at 67,000 mph, or 18.5 miles per second. I sense none of this. Likewise, I hang upside down on the face of this planet while directly sensing none of that, either. My sense of the possible shares some of this blesséd blindness, for I cannot directly determine possibility, either. Much of my work emerges under Wait And See conditions. I can talk myself out of something without directly knowing just how possible it might have been to produce. More telling, I can just as easily talk myself into starting something that will later turn out to be an impossible. Knowing which it might become often proves the most impossible, for will sometimes determines way. Other times, no amount of will can translate into any feasible way. We only ever learn this later.

The run-of-the-mill Impossible might well seem eminently doable at the outset. How anyone comes to know that they've tangled themselves up with a Truly Impossible can't be known beforehand. It almost can’t be known in the moment such knowing becomes necessary due to the differences between Having To, Wanting To, and Can't. In this culture, admitting a Can't can seem overwhelming, as if the admitter's selling themself short. We are a Can Do Culture fueled by audacious aspirations, and we more than frown upon admissions of inability. There's always a lingering sense that it would have become possible had the protagonist just stuck with it longer. We presume every shortfall to be caused by some absence of gumption or courage. "The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little while," Billie Holliday sang in Crazy He Calls Me. She meant it, too.

In the real world, considerable ambiguity hangs like a shroud over every experience and every endeavor. Again, our senses protect us from directly sensing much of it. We draw conclusions as easily as we draw breath and rarely find justification to question them. We believe we know what nobody could know, and this ignorance mainly protects us. If it were necessary to calculate and reconclude based solely upon changing circumstances, we'd be stuck in infinite recalculation loops. We move forward with confident strides thanks to our abiding ignorance, which might be anyone's sole superpower. When the time comes to face the facts, we find we're addicted to our particular fictions. The stories we told ourselves about our world seem more valid than the most recent recalibrating measurements.

I volunteered to help, then learned that I was powerless. After spending days staring into space, stuck in some trance, I began sensing that I could not make good on my commitment. In this instance, the impossible now looks as if it will take much longer than a little while. If I could calculate the timeline, it should properly exceed the infinite. I'm in over more than my head. I'm in over my soul this time.

Extricating myself from this misbegotten commitment seems just as impossible as making good on the commitment now seems. Nothing seems very possible right now. The illusions I grew dependent upon have gone without leaving fresh ones in their place. I look in the mirror but cannot see anything I recognize staring back. I feel displaced.

I depend upon lofty aspirations to keep me feeling sane. I revel in the routinely impossible. I routinely over-reach reasonable limits. That's what keeps me unique. I don't have much Quit built into my operating system. I drive myself crazy as a matter of course. It seems too simple to admit that I cannot do what I cannot do. How odd that this admission seems the least possible. If it was merely difficult, I might be doing it right now. I HaveTo/WantTo/ButCan't. I must be dealing with a true impossible here.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz