Where there's a will...

My playground philosophy has always been "if you're capable of it, you can do it. If you're not, then you don't need to be doing it anyway." There's a tad of selfishness to it--I don't want to have to follow them around the park, boosting them up onto equipment that they can't get back down from.

Boo, especially, can get creative when he wants to do something. He likes to imagine himself as a firefighter. At the park near our house there are 3 play structures. One of them is aimed at older kids, but it's also the one that has a 2-story "firefighter pole." The problem is that the bottom 'step' that leads up the structure to that pole is about 3 feet off the ground. When you're not even 4 feet tall, that's a formidable distance.

But, never one to sit idly by as other kids to something he wants to do, he's figured out that if he sticks his fingers into the holes on that step--as far back as he can reach--he can actually pull himself far enough up to get a leg up and then climb the whole 20 ft high structure.

I often say that the most important things I learned in college were 1) Give 'em what they want. The secret to succeeding in classes was understanding what the professor was after and giving it to them, and 2) "Don't take 'no' for an answer. From before I got accepted until after completing my senior project, I had to remind the school of their own rules and not let their attempts to operate otherwise prevent me from accomplishing my goals.

Both of those lessons have served me well as I went on to work and just 'be' in this world. What about you? Do you give up when an obstacle gets in your way? Do you let an unjust 'no' stop you from proceeding with what you know you're supposed to accomplish? Maybe it's time to take a step back, take another look at the situation and find another way to your goal.