The Impossible Dream, Part I

By Robert Ringer

A reader recently sent me an e-mail in which he lamented about his "impossible situation." I guess it's all in the eyes of the beholder, because to me it appeared that his was an impossible situation with a lot of possibilities.

So what, exactly, is an "impossible situation?" More specifically, what does "impossible" really mean? Is it impossible to make a mountain move simply by having faith? That's quite a challenge. If anyone could do it, it would probably be that Star Wars guy, Yoda. But I don't know of anyone outside of Hollywood who's mastered such extraordinary mind power.

Is it impossible to get the man or woman of your dreams to love you if he/she is already in love with — and maybe married to — someone else? (Shades of Dudley Moore in the classic 1979 movie 10.) Not quite like moving a mountain, but perhaps a close second.

Terminal cancer? Miraculous healing is a surefire invitation to a heated debate. Many of us have known people who were told they had terminal cancer, yet survived and lived to enjoy many more healthy years. Have all of those cases been flukes?

All of which begs the question: When the seemingly impossible happens, is it God, luck, coincidence, or something else that is responsible? God can presumably do anything, but God also helps those who "help themselves" — meaning those who take action. So, the human ability to take conscious action is very much intertwined with God.

Sometimes we witness the impossible and refer to it as a coincidence. But I'm not sure there is such a thing as a coincidence. Coincidences might just be the attraction of one group of atoms to another. Suppose I haven't spoken to you in a year, and I suddenly decide to call you. But before I can dial your number, the phone rings — and it's you! That's happened to me far too many times for it to be classified as a "coincidence."

Which leads me to that great metaphysical abstraction we refer to as human will. The will to accomplish something — be it winning a sporting event or moving a mountain — manifests itself in something we call attitude. If I have the "right" attitude, I can will something to happen ... i.e., I can literally think it into being.

Viktor Frankl, developer of logotherapy, was perhaps the most famous of all Holocaust survivors. He lost his mother, father, brother, and wife in Nazi concentration camps. Years later, as a world-famous psychiatrist, he wrote: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Okay, so Frankl had an amazing attitude under seemingly impossible circumstances. But wasn't he lucky as well? Absolutely. I'm sure that Frankl would have been the first to admit that he was a very lucky man, but he also was convinced that he could not have survived Auschwitz and Dachau had he not focused on finding a meaning to life.

In Part II of this article, we'll examine three options you would have had if you had found yourself in the same circumstances as Viktor Frankl in the 1940s.

Next - The Impossible Dream, Part II

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