Potential

By Veronica

When I was a kid, I absorbed a less than sparkling truth from the kids’ movies and cheerful teachers around me: I could be anything I wanted to be. There was no limit to my potential. As long as I had big dreams and worked hard, the possibilities for my adult life were wide open and endless.

I recall once when I was about eight, I referred to this idea in the presence of my father. It never occurred to me that he might not share this belief. The Free to Be You and Me approach to education had left me with the certainty that loving parents (which my father undoubtedly was and is) believe in their children, no matter what their children’s dreams are. But when I mentioned that I could be anything I wanted to be, my father looked at me skeptically.

“Veronica,” he said. “You cannot be anything you want to be. No matter how hard you try, you will never play professional football.”

Of course, I did not want to play professional football, so that was no heartbreak, but I remember being a little shocked that my father did not have faith in my unlimited potential. Children, after all, make excellent dogmatists, and I was a little disturbed that he was dissenting from the orthodoxy of my schoolteachers.

It did not take long for me to recognize my father’s common sense. My first practical experience came in seventh grade when we learned to sew in Home Economics. Until then, I had always supposed that if I was bad at something, it was simply because I did not have enough practice or my teachers were not explaining it well. But sewing, no matter how hard I tried or how carefully the teacher explained, was beyond me. My fingers would not do what other students’ fingers would. It was the first time I came face to face with my inescapable lack of ability.

Contrary to the assumptions of my youthful indoctrination, I found more freedom and encouragement toward accomplishment in accepting that there are things I simply can’t do. Once I recognized that there were things I could not do, the many things I could do were thrown into sharper relief. I saw my talents and skills in a new way.

I will never play professional sports, and I am equally unlikely to ever be a successful salesperson, sky diver or wedding planner. The skills and temperament necessary for those careers are as foreign to me as breathing underwater. But just as I see the talents that other people have for those jobs, I recognize my own unique abilities and feel encouraged to exercise them.

My children are so young that it is easy to see their potential as limitless. My four-year-old currently wants to be a paleontologist, a mechanic and an astronaut. None of these are serious goals yet, but maybe someday one of them will be. Part of my challenge as a parent is to teach her the courage and determination to overcome obstacles, but also to help her to recognize her limits in a way that allows a sense of accomplishment and encourages her real talents. If her dreams eventually have no more realism than those of the man in the Life of Brian who claims he has a right to be pregnant, then we did not do our jobs right.

Veronica Mitchell can also be found blogging at Toddled Dredge.