n't

I've been encountering a lot of resistance lately. For various things, from various people, for various reasons there seems to be a lot of negativity out there.

That's not to say there isn't a time and a place for the word "no". Some things can't or shouldn't be done; others won't work no matter how hard you try. As much as I abhor the notion of fate, in some instances we're bound to fail.

So effing what? is my question to you.

One of my favourite things to say is "...not with that attitude" whenever someone says they can't accomplish something before they've given it a shot. If you can think of all the reasons why a thing can't be done before you've learned what the possibilities are then, well, you might avoid one failure but you're missing the millions of opportunities that come from improvising a solution.

I consider myself part of the try-and-fail camp. I fail lots. I'm good at it. I'm sure I'll fail far more, for years to come. In fact, I pretty much always aim too high and expect too much. But I'm seldom disappointed because I understand the value of failure. I fail to understand the value in not trying.

Here's a list of words I also fail to understand:

no
not
can't
won't
don't
shouldn't
impossible
unfeasible
ridiculous
absurd
unimaginable
forget it
unable
foolish
unattainable

Just for the record, I sort of stop listening when one of those words appears in every sentence of a conversation.