Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

“I don't need easy. I just need possible”. That is the reply of a young girl to her dad who points out that learning to surf is not going to be easy. The girl is thirteen years old, and a year earlier a tiger shark had bitten off her left arm while she was surfing. Now she wants to get back on the board, with only one arm. Her name is Bethany Hamilton, and her (true) story makes good reading in “Soul Surfer”. Bethany has lots of setbacks, but eventually turns pro and wins some major competitions, even though a few months after her near-fatal accident things looked very different. But thanks to a very supportive family, her faith in God, and a lot of grit and determination, she overcame the odds.

As I was pondering Bethany's story on an airplane (where else?) somewhere between Nairobi and Istanbul, above quote struck me deeply. It would have been easy not to try, or to give up, especially after her first futile attempts. But she did not choose the easy route- as long as it was possible, she was going to try. We all have missing limbs: if it is not a left arm which a shark has bitten off, then it's a fear of heights, a hatred of crowed social situations, or a sense of inferiority. Some of those handicaps we were born with, others we developed thanks to wild animals in our environment which attacked us, physically or emotionally. And most of us are crippled by these scars: I have a friend who struggles leaving his home, let alone his town; famous piano player Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli cancelled more concerts than he played, because of an usual case of nerves; and my heart sinks whenever I board an airplane any smaller than a 747 because chances are that I will feel the slightest turbulence and get afraid. In other words we are all handicaps. The question is what we do with them.

Bethany has inspired me. Not so much because she is winning trophies again; more because she did not listen to the little black dog inside her telling her “it will never work”. Instead she was willing to try, to risk, even to risk failure. And the rest is history. What are you risking this summer? As for me, I am going sailing for a week, even though I wonder what the waves will do to my stomach. But hey, I don't need easy: just possible!