You Can't and I Can

Having watched my son get stronger at baseball all season, I am eager to keep his skill level up, which sometimes means I am the catching partner. Okay, it almost never means that I am the catching partner, as he could blast a hole through me with the strength of his throw. Today, however, I was it. He didn't start out so happy--I wasn't necessarily holding the glove right or catching the ball right or throwing it back right. Yet, from where I was standing, I not only maintained the stamina to keep up, I threw far (and ran far to retrieve what I didn't catch). I fielded grounders and pop-ups and line drives, perhaps not with the most beautiful form, but with reasonable success. In the face of his "you can't," I had the realization that actually, I can.
 
Every day (more often in life than in a pickup baseball practice), we are faced with "you can't." It can happen so often that we may begin to assume that, in fact, we can't--can't learn the lingo, can't look the part, can't do the job. Yet, if we go into these situations as I did today's baseball, with a fairly open mind and a mostly positive attitude, we sometimes find that "you can't" falls apart pretty quickly in the face of "I can." It doesn't mean that we will be the best at everything we try (my son won't get his best baseball practice catching with me). But it does mean that we can walk into new situations and handle them. It does mean that we can challenge the interviewers and managers and people controlling the paths. In the face of "you can't," we can stand up for ourselves, and as we're delivering our perfect pitch, declare "I can." Because a lot more often than we think, we really can.