It can’t be done! Can it?

How many times have you thought or been told that something can’t be done, or it’s impossible?  I know that I have been told that some things are crazy, virtually impossible, or just “simply can’t be done”.

I don’t know about you, but I would like to think that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. 

Here’s a story my friend Charley Johnson shared with me a little over a year ago.  It’s from “The Big MOO” written by Seth Godin.

Suppose that I had asked you, in the mid-1980′s, what you thought it would take to bring down the Berlin Wall? What would you have said? I can imagine the answer. Perhaps another world war. Perhaps some kind of multilateral, long term rapprochement between East & West Germany. At the very least, some kind of intervention costing many billions of dollars. Certainly that’s the kind of scenario that was envisioned by all of the worlds so called experts on Eastern Europe. When it came to predicting the life span of the soviet bloc, the CIA, state department and pentagon did not think in terms of months or even years. They thought in terms of decades.
 
But what actually happened? In September of 1989, a small group of dissidents in Leipzig, East Germany, held a protest rally and for reasons no one quite understands the local police did not shut it down. The next day, in the next town over, another group of dissidents held a protest of their own and it was a little bigger this time and because they were emboldened by what happened in Leipzig. The police in that town didn’t stop the protesters because, after seeing what happened in Leipzig, they thought that maybe they weren’t supposed to do anything. The day after that, there was still another protest in the next town over – a little bit bigger than the last, the police a little more passive and on and on. All through East Germany, the protests got bigger and bigger and the police grew more and more passive until a million people gathered in the streets of East Berlin in October 1989 and tore down the Berlin Wall as the police sat and watched.
 
This was the biggest change any of us will probably ever see in our lifetime. It took a month, it cost nothing, and it started with a handful of people in a town no one would ever have pegged as the birthplace of a revolution.
 
Remember that the next time someone says, “It can’t be done.”

 _______

Now think about this,   if something like this did happen,  would it be possible if you just went out and did one nice thing for a stranger, and another person did the same and so on?

Think about it.  What if people would continue to treat each other kindly and that kindness spread?  What if kindness became the “norm”?

Could a smile change the world?  I don’t know,  Maybe. 

What do you think?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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