”Which is more important?  The world you can touch, or the one you are responding to?”  

While in training and learning to recognize the role of FACTS over FEELINGS, I saw a movie of Shakespeare’s Henry IV (could have been Henry V) in which the King has sent out a scout to check out the strength of the opposing army his troops are to face the next day.  The scout returns to report (Okay, you British lit experts, cut me some slack here on the facts) that Henry’s men are out-numbered four-to-one, that their enemies will charge on horseback while Henry’s men are on foot, that the enemy has many cannons and armaments while Henry’s men have only small bows. The situation is without hope. Henry sends the scout away, thinks through the possibilities for the next day, then calls his men together, I’m thinking, to give them the bad news.  Henry proceeds to give the most Emotional Guidance System-sucking speech I’ve ever heard.

Henry’s side won.  Against impossible odds.  So, whoa.  Now that shot a hole in my new “fact-based” living plans.  I’ve never been able to get that speech out of my mind.  Henry changed the outcome by his sheer will and capacity to capture the collective emotional systems of his men.  That means something about what’s possible. 

Studies show that girls are more often than boys allowed to back away from difficult tasks.  That women are not as much looked down on for wiggling out of unmet goals– if they turn their energies to cleaning up after others. (Breaking news! A sweet happy housewife with blond hair and medium pumps in the last commercial let me in on the news that I don’t have to clean my toilets everyday anymore!  The relief… Then another lass let me in on the news that I no longer have to dust every week. Where have these knowing women been all my life?)  

Where is your King Henry when you give up too easily? 

I know you think the world with it’s venues where you are out-numbered, where you don’t have the talent, exists, but it doesn’t.  It does not exist. 

The people around you?  You’ve made them up, too. You’ve made up how they think about you. 

That world you are responding to, the one that limits where you can go, YOU MADE IT UP. …along with a little help from parents, siblings, the girl next door, and that P.E. teacher who made you dress out in the seventh grade. ….But, phfffffft.  on them.  I’m so full of Henry’s speech that I’m going to do this!   Oooooooooooh. Ouuuch. There’s clearly a limit to the creative thinking process. 

Tomorrow . . . what happens when you think the best of people?  And assume they are crazy about you?