I Am Whatever You Say I Am

_{[3]<- What's This}

_{Waiting For: I AM LEGEND}

I don't believe in limits. I don't believe in these invisible barriers that the hard edged warden known as reality tries to enforce down unto us. I don't believe in "I can't" because there is nothing that exists in this universe that I am unable to learn. I don't believe in anything that limits my god given limitless potential. I still hold fast to the shiny silver wordage on the stickers my kindergarten teacher stuck to the top of my worksheets. "You are super!" "You can do anything!" "You are special!"

YES I AM. YES I CAN [Nutty Professor "Yes I can"]

How did I get this way. Most of the world holds selfishly to their shortcomings even going as far as often times using them as interpersonal identification. Most of the time we even describe people by what we perceive as their limitation as though we are verbally sizing them up.

*Phone conversation

"Look at Becky the fat girl.

You know the crazy chick that sits next to the guy with glasses, James.

Yeah, James. You know James, the sleepy guy with the crazy hair and the slight limp.

Yeah, Becky is mad because he's marrying my sister next weekend.

You know my sister!

Stacy, the one with the lob sided breast.

Yeah! That one."

We define ourselves and each other with the limits that have defined the world around us but can we break free of this prison known as reality and go beyond our limits?

Maybe I just watched a bit too much television as a child but I don't recall ever believing in limits. Seriously. Even hard defined and nature reinforced laws didn't hold me back. In my eyes everything I saw on television was fair game. Time travel, unassisted flight, super human speed, inhuman strength, telekinesis, teleportation, levitation, [term for shooting electricity from my hands] I tried them all. Observing adults thought that I was playing but I was for real.

I think I tried flying more than once. I keep having this recurring dream that I am actually soaring on a cushion of air and nothing more. Everything is so real. I can feel the wind resistance. I can feel the vibration of the turbulent sky and gravity both trying to reclaim their escaped prisoner. In those moments I am free from it all. Limits, liabilities, fault. There are nothing but endless possibilities and then.... I wake up.

I've never grown out of thinking that there is nothing that I can't do. I honestly believe that if I focus hard enough the rules of reality will be become momentarily unchained and I will be able to escape to a haven outside of the depressed race of humanity. I will be able to soar amongst the birds and run along the cheetahs. I will be able to swim with the dolphins and lurk with the slithering snakes. I will be more than the limits I was born within. The container known as human, further defined by race, age, gender, height, weight, income bracket, intelligence level, vehicle I drive, color I wear most often, woman I'm dating and/or married to, women I've slept with, house I live in, occupation, shoe size, running speed, criminal history, offspring, siblings, mother, father, cousins, penis! WHY WHY WHY!

Why does any of it matter? Beyond being descriptive introductions to define those we don't know we have taken it a step further to actually design the limits for which we hold ourselves back. We are plagued with a limited mind. A mind that, if allowed to, creates our prison for us. Throughout history men have proven theory's and ideas wrong but even modern science continues to tell us what things are possible and what things aren't.

A perfect example of the contradiction that is the modern world is religion. I honestly believe that religion has its place within our daily lives and modern world but not in its outdated 10th century representation. No matter what religion you practice it was probably founded way back before television, internet, toasters, telephones and even polyester fiber. (I'm gong to be careful with the following statements as not to offend any one persons' religion but please feel free to defend and/or ask any follow up questions you like before making multiple clicks on the inappropriate flag above, Thank you :) With a practice being formed that long ago you would expect a few major revisions along the way just to keep up with the times. Think about medicine. What if the practice of medicine was still in the form it was today as when it was first created. Would you really support and stand for blood letting and routine lobotomy's for mental patients [wikipedia Medicine history]? What about science? How far would we now be if those in Christopher Columbus's day won the debate over whether the world was round or flat? Would our airplanes exist? How about our satellites and space ships? So what about religion?

I'm not saying that there needs to be a reform on the general morals and principals that modern religion contains (which are actually beneficial to society) but I'm hard pressed on the limits that religion sets on humanity itself. Those who read The Bible (also known as The Good Book, The Gospel, MY Right Arm, etc...) talk about Jesus as though he was there favorite cousin. Jesus could do it all. Jesus was the living legend of the biblical times. He could exceed the gravitational pull of the earth's rotation (he could fly). He could adjust his metabolic buoyancy so that he could stroll across the turbulent surface of an unsteady substance (he could walk on water). He could change the material properties of hydrogen dioxide to those of an alcoholic beverage created from the fermentation of grapes (he could turn water into wine). Jesus was the first super hero [Who will save us?] and to top it all off, he was only a man.

Now bible folk talk about Jesus this and Jesus that and they even hold on to the belief that he is one day gonna return but do they really believe the things they say or is saying those things so habitual that it just drips off of the edges of the regular conversational, defensive sentence structure. What I mean is in watching the news or reading the newspaper you see stories almost everyday of miraculous proportion. A man in New York jumped onto the tracks of an oncoming subway train to save someone [news story]. Or in California a group of firemen survived the intolerable blaze to extinguish an out of control flame [news story]. Or on the Simpson's Maggie saved Homer from drowning [You Tube Maggie Saves Homer]. Now, as much as Jesus believers believe in Jesus they are not willing o believe that any of these instances were Jesus manifested in human form. They will argue with you to the death that the Jesus they know has long black hair and fair skin and that he will come without fault or flaw and float on a cloud. The Jesus they talk about kind of resembles Fabio in description anyway.

But a man like Jesus, given exclusive lenience from the laws of reality by god, is one to be admired. We should all try to exceed our limits. Jesus should be an example not solely because of his sacrifice (which is mostly what religion wants to make of him, a glorified martyr) but his conviction to exceed the limits of not just reality but infinity. He believed that mortal death was not the end. He knew that your actions, ideas and emotions transcend your humanness into eternity. His name is spoken more than even our living relatives and we know they are just a phone call away. We should use his example or whomever example that can teach us a lesson in going beyond. People like Lance Armstrong [Lance Armstrong] surviving cancer and winning the Tour De France. People like Martin Luther King [Martin Luther King] who stood against what everyone else accepted as a reality and sought to change it. People like my own mother who doctors told her she would never walk again and she did [the five-o-5]. People who push the limits. Those are the ones I look up too.

So next time crazy eyed Tommy comes up to you with his yellow, gapped teeth tell him that you don't believe in limits and then ask him, "What would Jesus do," and fly out of the room contained within a bubble of confidence and content. At least that's what I would do.