Today Sarah and I were driving home and passed by the Lancaster prison. It's actually a really cool building...it looks like an old castle...except with barbed wire on top of all the walls. Outside of the prison was a stenciled sign that said:
JOBS OPEN
HIRING IMMEDIATELY
MEN AND WOMEN
I cracked, "Baby, look. Let's go get jobs."
Without missing a beat Sarah said, "Oooooh, yea! I can go in and tell them my ideas for torturing people!"
Please believe me when I say Sarah isn't nearly as twisted as that statement would lead you to believe. You just have to understand Sarah's idea of linear thinking. I'll try to explain:
The other day Sarah was watching brain surgery on YouTube (if you can think of a more ridiculous way to start a story, then kudos to you). Since then she's mentioned on occasion or two how she has been inspired to be a brain surgeon.
Can I be honest? After some questioning I figured out Sarah doesn't want to be a brain surgeon. Sarah wants to be a what-happens-if-I-open-up-your-head-and-poke-here person. It's not that she wants to be a doctor, it's just that she's realllllly curious.
Today when she told me about torturing prisoners, I asked her what kind of torture she had in mind.
"You know," she explained, "Suturing and stuff."
"So you're not really looking to torture them, you just want to cut them and then sew them up and then cut them somewhere else and sew them up again." And I honestly believe she would because she believes that she can. Actually, she knows she can.
People in general won't let you cut them up just to see if you can do it and that's why Sarah wants to do it to prisoners. You rob an old lady, you're gonna have to pay by letting Sarah cut you open and looking around.
That's one of the things I admire about Sarah, though. Not that she wants to hack up prisoners but the fact that, if they called her up tomorrow and said, "Sarah, how would you like to cut someone's head open and look around inside?" she would be there in an instant (she'd probably do a little research on YouTube first, but I guarantee she'd be there).
I've told Sarah this before: There is nothing that Sarah doesn't think she can do. As far as she's concerned, if she can dream it up, she can do it. I wish I had a little more of that. We probably all do.
Is there something you haven't done or aren't doing simply because you don't think you can do it? I'm not talking about kidnapping people and performing exploratory surgery on them, but a dream of some kind you're killing by convincing yourself you can't do it. Maybe there's a job you want to apply for or an instrument you've been putting off learning. Maybe there's someone you've wanted to say hello to or a story you've thought about putting on paper.
Whatever it is, we can all take a lesson from Sarah. Don't think about it. Like the over-used shoe slogan says, just do it. As soon as the words "I can't because..." leave your mouth, you've done your part in killing your dream forever. And years down the road when you look back, "I can't because" will have morphed into "I wish I tried."
Do it. You can. I know you can. Sarah does, too.
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