Believe the impossible

When Alice said in Wonderland that there is no use in trying to believe impossible things, the Queen responded “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Self-help bookshelves are full of titles about making dreams come true, and we spend much of our time trying to believe incredible things. In reflection of that, a cartoon movie The Incredibles became a box office hit not long ago. We believe in the fiction, romance, and anime stories we watch and read, and sometimes we get inspired by them. Yet like Alice it is all too easy to shrink back from believing in impossible things taking place in our own lives.

Rhonda Byrne and her friends explain in The Secret that it is not enough to think about what we want in our lives. For the law of attraction to work in our advantage, we need to believe in our dreams, to visualize them, and to feel them. That is more than reading a book or watching a movie, but these can inspire us to make a start and see the dots in our life connecting.

I love to take books with me when I travel, and some of them invariably are about self-enrichment. I get inspired by reading books ― well, some of them ― and it works much faster than seeing a 90 minute film. Just a few pages will do. Books are a source of inspiration to me everyday and wherever I go, and I don’t mind carrying the extra kilos in my bag.

Taking a two-week break in Holland and England helped me to simplify my life and learn to enjoy every moment more. I saw nature’s art in the bark of an oak tree in front of my primary school, enjoyed walking my friend’s South African dog Whiskey in a chilly dark night, raced with dizzying speed through London in a double-decker bus on the way to the theatre, shared my daughter’s thrill to feed a sharp-beaked emu from her open hand, danced to the beat of the Blue Man Group, and marveled at the sight of an English couple taking their new-born baby to the pub.

And, of course, I bought more books, including The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch, his best work according to the critics. I look forward to reading it.

I also received life lessons about friendship, going the extra mile, and about someone’s daily struggle with a fading determination to live when blessed old age seems to come with ever more weakness and fatigue. The time comes when we have to allow the souls of our elders to pass on, with our warmest wishes, and with an assurance that they and we “will be fine.” And yet, every day may bring unforeseen blessings, and who knows when our time of passing will arrive? I was reminded of Jim Paredes’ counsel to live every day as if it were our last.

Life is truly miraculous when we awake to believe the impossible, before or after breakfast!

Photograph: Feeding an Emu.