My parents gave me and my siblings this motto so that we would feel confident and feel like the sky was the limit.  I gave it to my kids too.   If you can dream it, you can do it.  It’s the proverbial American dream.

The trouble with this motto is that it’s just not true.   It’s more true for some and less true for others, but it’s never wholly true for anyone.  I am a white, upper-middle class female.  My parents were college educated and gave me a college education.   I had more chance of this motto being true than most.

but still …. 

This motto tells us there are no limits, but no matter how much positive thinking we do, or how much faith we muster, no matter how much good energy we send into the universe, or how hard we work, there are limits.   

Financial limits, social limits, intellectual limits, physical limits. 

Limitations are important to acknowledge.  Limitations are the things in our lives that, if we pay attention, will teach us who we are.  They will teach us that we are human and do not have ultimate control.  Control is what this motto can become all about.  If we believe the motto that we can be whatever we want to be, and we don’t temper it with a healthy dose of reality, we can feel as though we are in control of our outcomes.  This type of control leads to blame.  We assign blame to ourselves and to others if our goals and expectations are not met.  Maybe we didn’t work hard enough, believe it enough, or stick with it long enough.  Maybe others didn’t either.  It allows us to take a short-cut and not really get to know ourselves or others.  Who are we really?  Where did we come from?  Where are we going?  What kinds of issues are we dealing with?  Without getting to know ourselves and others, we reduce the person to a formula rather than an individual.  The person becomes someone who just didn’t put forth the appropriate amount or type of effort, or didn’t have the right mentality, or faith or stamina.  And so, we miss both our own humanity and the humanity of others.  And we will miss the chance to extend grace.  Maybe the person who falls behind in school has a learning disability, or the person who has poor work attendance has a mental or physical illness.  Maybe that person who has put on weight is taking care of a disabled child and doesn’t have time to exercise, or maybe the person who can’t pay their rent lost their job and their savings paying for medical treatments.    

But sometimes it feels better to maintain the illusion of control.  We can get caught in the trap of working so hard to preserve the dream, that we don’t live the life we were meant to live.   The continued resolve to put forth more effort or believe more in order to gain the greener grass is the best distraction from doing the things we really CAN do and living our lives in the present. 

When my son was two or three, we were driving and he began to cry suddenly and inconsolably from his car seat in the back.  I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I’ll NEVER be a bird!!!”  I was confused at first, then realized that he had just realized that the "you can be anything you want to be" narrative I had given him just was not true.  No matter how hard he tried in life, he would never be a bird;

he would always be a human

But human is nice.  

(To comment, click on the Title of this blog post, "Mottoes, Part 4.  'You can be anything you want to be'"