Telling Tales | The one where anything is possible
Today, my wife Polly is going to finish another fitness challenge.
She’s been doing 25 push ups a day for 25 days (and smashing them out like a juiced-up GI Jane). Earlier in lockdown she did 10,000 kettlebell swings.
“Ah but,” I hear you say, “she’s in great shape and super strong.”
Well, yes, she is. But context is everything. And she hasn’t always been like this. Far from it. (The BBC filmed this little video of her last year which tells part of her story.)
You see, 14 years ago, when we were both at university in Liverpool (more on Liverpool in a minute), Polly had an operation where her pelvis was broken in three places and her hip socket repositioned so she could be pain free and walk properly.
It was just another operation for her. The latest in a long line of surgery she’d had since she was a toddler after she was born with hip dysplasia in both hips (this is where the hip socket isn’t formed properly).
After that last op, she was in a wheelchair for six months. She had to learn to walk again. Sport, fitness, physical exercise, were the furthest thing from her mind.
Fast forward 14 years, and she’s a push up machine, she crushes every CrossFit workout she does, she can do handstands, pull ups, olympic lifts, she runs, and she’s rowed six times at the World Pilot Gig Championships.
It didn’t all happen at once. There’s been ups and downs. But through hard work, patience, persistence, an iron will, forming habits, and approaching everything in a calm and measured way - she’s doing things on a daily basis she never dreamed would be possible.
And she inspires those around her to do the same by the pure virtue of being herself.
She refuses to be defined by the things she can’t do. Instead, she works at the things she wants to do. She practices. She trains. She puts in the hard yards. And slowly but surely, what looked like the impossible, becomes a reality.
Which brings me to Liverpool. A city that will always hold a special place in our hearts. Last night, Liverpool FC ended a 30 year wait to become champions of England once again.
Liverpool specialise in the impossible. Milan in 2005, Barcelona in 2019, plus countless others. They had no right to win those games. But somehow they did.
This is Jurgen Klopp’s title. His achievements with Dortmund and Liverpool - both built around the power of the team, of the willingness for individuals to commit to something bigger than themselves, and of doing the right things, the right way, for the right reasons on a daily basis - show anything is possible.
This week, for me at least, has felt like a respite from the storm of 2020 (even if it's felt like I've had the weight of the world on my back at times). It doesn't mean the storm's over. Divisions are rife, anger and outrage are never far away, hate bubbles close to the surface.
But all of us still have that innate ability inside of us to become better than the sum of our parts, to do the remarkable, to make dreams into reality, and to make positive change in the world.
After all, at the end of the storm, there’s a golden light, and the sweet silver song of the lark.
Until next time,
Tommy
#YNWA
PS - while I’m banging on about doing impossible things, check out this Tiny Desk Concert from Tash Sultana. How one woman can create this sound is beyond my levels of comprehension but it is incredible.