Taking on Impossible

This week I have been organising myself for next week. Once again, I’ll be hot-footing it across the Victoria, a state bigger than the United Kingdom, to spend a week with a dear friend trying to fix all manner of things on my car. In regards to outsourcing, mentioned in my last post here, and whilst trying to keep myself sane through relaxing enough (another blog post, here) I do enjoy solving problems. And there are many, many problems to solve. One of the names that has been floated for my beloved Troopie is Izzy – short for ‘Issue’.
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I could of course get someone else to do the work for me and costing me money, yet I do enjoy the challenge. Each day I am learning about my vehicle, about its history and previous drivers, about the sheer amount of dust and spiders hidden in nooks and crannies, which seem bloody endless by the way, and most importantly for me, learning about how things work. 

Making me Izzy

Electrics and mechanics, two things I don’t profess to be any good at, will be my best friends. Or arch-enemies. It has taken me weeks, for example, to learn how to wire my electric seats I’ve brought. Did I need to do that? No! Ahh, but did I want to do that? Also no! For the majority of the time anyway, but now it’s almost done I can look back with satisfaction and say ‘well that wasn’t too bad.’ But what good is knowledge if you can’t bore the pants off of someone with it? Exactly!
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I’ve seen many, many posts tell me how it can’t be done (installing Volvo seats into a Landcruiser) but that just makes people like me want to do it more. Proving people wrong. When I drove from the UK to Australia with my friend Dwyer Rooney, we were told our vehicle would never make it. We encountered so many people that were inspired by the trip, that were excited by it, even some that were doing similar adventures, but every now and then again we were told by someone, a border guard, a local, a traveller, that something was impossible, which is like waking the Godzilla of Rebellion inside of me.

Hollywood Impossible

If I was in a canny movie or advert I’d spout clap-trap that if you take away the I in Impossible you get possible. And a lonely M. . . .ahh, but maybe that m is for contemplation, like ‘wow Richard, you’ve just blown my mind, I’m going to think about what you’ve said . . .mmmmmm . . .’

<Ed - Although really that just sounds like you’re hungry>

Yes . . . hungry for knowledge!
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<Ed – Good grief!>

Impossible to Possible

Change ‘impossible’ to ‘hard’ and we’ve just created a challenge. No matter if it’s an innocuous meeting or simply just idle banter, if someone claims with complete assurance that something is impossible, challenge it. Most people throw around the word just as a warning against even trying, simply because giving something a go takes risk, guts and determination, which they probably don’t have. At some point impossible was the four-minute mile; a woman flying across the Atlantic; landing on the moon; a black President; UK winning Eurovision; winning the Tour de France 7 times; Wales winning the World Cup <Ed – Actually . . .>
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Resilience

​From those examples we know that the impossible can be conquered, even if it takes a humungous amount of performance enhancing drugs to do so (bloody Lulu!). In discussing what makes me, and others, travel to some far-flung places, the answer quickly came from now-an-ex-friend, “a low IQ”. Which I actually don’t dispute! I think there is a certain amount of optimism tinged with ignorance of not knowing when you’re beaten, of not giving up when you face every obstacle in the world, of side-stepping, ducking, weaving, cajoling, hassling, pleading and imploring if necessary to get the result you need. I would add to that, as a huge caveat, that the result isn’t everything, or at least for me. Getting the right result without causing others harm or detriment is imperative. Not every situation can be win-win for all involved, but it doesn’t have to be about someone completely losing either. But only you can decide that one, taking each Izzy at a time, you can achieve the impossible.