Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it…

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I chose this quote for the first quote in Quotation Tuesday for obvious reasons. I am starting this section today and I am hoping for this to go a long and grand way. At times, I can’t help but think that this kind of section has no potential to grow or expand. At those times, it is words like this that motivates me to do this stuff anyway.

The author talks about how we dream and scheme big but when it comes to work, we shy away saying it is not practical or not useful enough. The fact is, we never know if a thing is going to be impractical or useless and more often than not, our fear makes it so. It can be as simple as laziness or as difficult as dread over the outcome (or the lack thereof.)

The operating word here is not doing or dreaming; it is beginning. In fact, it is equated implicitly with boldness. Most men who count themselves successful by any measure are so not because they thought or dreamt. It was because they did. We see this most especially in the movie Forrest Gump. Forrest is a simpleton who did everything on a whim or because someone told him. He is never shown as one making elaborate plans or tactics. He just did what he had to. It was indeed as simple as ‘run Forrest run’ and ‘just keep an eye on the ball.’ With a little luck and lot of faith, he was able to succeed in whatever he did.

Further, there is the trio of ‘genius’, ‘power’ and ‘magic’. These qualities are joined with boldness which in turn was equated to beginning what you want to do. It basically says that to do what you want, all the things you would need are in the act of beginning it itself. We would all agree that to get a thing done, you would need to know how to do it and then get the resources that you would need to do it. There is also always an unexplained phenomenon or an unaccounted parameter which can be called luck. The three-word combination accounts for all of these. Genius accounts for knowledge (and its application), power accounts for resourcefulness and magic accounts for the seldom understood nature of luck. There, you have everything you need to complete the task and you get it all just by beginning it.

One is tempted to think then, how does anyone fail?! Naturally, any task that is done has had a beginning and if beginning has all these amazing properties, how can anything fail. The answer can be as long as a book or a short word: Faith in what you are doing. Many who are doing something to escape the alternative seldom get the result. Those who know that they can do it, do it. The famous adage goes that Thomas Edison tried a thousand times before he invented the light bulb. It was simple: He just knew he would get there in the end and that is how he did.