Clear Your Mind of Can't

On my refrigerator door is a note pad that says “Clear Your Mind Of Can’t”. Granted it’s easier said than done but it’s a good thing to file away in your noggin, you may never know when it will come in handy.


The Battle of Britain is one of those uneven battles I mentioned that I would speak of, and I will
but not just now. One of the insanely courageous men who fought in that battle is my focus at the moment. His name was Wing Commander Douglas Bader. I may be related to him (my mother says yes, my aunt says no) . For those of you not raised in England, Bader was quite a prominent name in that famous struggle for air supremacy over Great Britain. But only because he cleared his mind of “Can’t”.


Young Douglas was in the Royal Air Force before the war but there was a plane crash, in 1931, that almost cost him his life… and did cost him his legs. That would have been that for most people, but Bader, instead of choosing to get around in a wheelchair, a walker or even a cane, he chose a Supermarine Spitfire, the finest fighter in the air at the time and he proceeded to procure one. By 1939 he was back in the air as a fighter pilot and then promoted to command. He was shot down in 1941 and as a POW made several escape attempts. In 1976 he was knighted and then on into legend.

If someone tells you “It can’t be done”, it just means that they can’t do it.