The Box of Impossible Things We Postpone

🤲🏽 Reflection

When I borrowed Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez from the Libby app, I didn’t expect to learn anything. I came for an ooey, gooey, cheesy love story and left with a life lesson.

The main character was stuck between going back to her old life, the one she was familiar with, and a path where she’d succumb to everyone else’s expectations of her, and a possible future she didn’t permit herself to dream it up at all. It felt like that version of her life got tossed right into The Box of Impossible Things. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s where we throw our health goals, travel plans, the one passion that still occupies a lot of space in our brains and hearts, and even relationship aspirations.

The moment she realized she didn’t have to choose between her head and her heart, it was a wrap. Everything fell into place, and she knew exactly where she was supposed to be. And while it is a fictional story, seeing it up against the way so many of us move through life was revelatory. It felt like I was looking at myself from the outside in.

I need to follow more people who bravely keep putting one step in front of the other. There’s this YouTuber I subscribe to, life and numbers, who documented her life while she was unemployed after getting laid off in 2025, two months before I did. Month after month, she shared updates on her job search, her budget for the month, all of it. After a year of staying consistent and growing her audience and channel, she officially just decided to become a full-time content creator. Coming from the tech world and a six-figure salary, this wasn’t what she envisioned for herself, but it turned into her passion.

Impossibility could just be a lack of imagination. Then again, maybe it’s a fear of looking too closely at what the other side could hold. Would I be as happy as I imagine? That level of happiness sometimes feels… impossible.

But what if we allowed ourselves to really think through what it would feel like to accomplish what we dream of? Who might we become? Could it soften us, or strengthen us, or finally make us feel aligned? Or, D. All of the above?

It takes courage to push past the life we know like the back of our hands. All of the routines, expectations, and the version of ourselves that learned that it’s safe to stay close to what you know.

What if we could do what we truly want, what we carry quietly in our head and heart, regardless of the ripple effects it might cause?

Maybe The Box of Impossible Things isn’t where dreams shrivel and die. I imagine it to be where we place the lives we’re not yet brave enough to choose.

What was that book? Romance or therapy? lol You get what I’m putting down though, right?

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🌀 In My Head About It

One of my favorite things to do is make connections between something I just learned and the world around me.

I watched a long interview recently that is filled to the brim with wisdom, progressive thinking, common sense, and…hope? It’s definitely worth the listen. It made me think about how many policies, laws, and programs that would genuinely benefit people get tossed into The Box of Impossible Things so that power can remain exactly where it is.

Top Quotes by Mia Mottley
(from the first 45 minutes of her interview with Trevor Noah)

“We are unfairing people.”
On how immigrants are treated, and the lack of a structured global system (think: basic education, basic healthcare, real support) for people who choose or are forced to migrate.
“Why would they change what they’re doing if it works for them?”
On power remaining where it is, protecting systems that benefit those already in power.
“Tell me when in history any civilization has conquered or survived by shutting in… any living organism survives by opening up. It doesn’t work.”
On how people react after years and years of inequity and loss - job insecurity, shrinking opportunities, and eroded life aspirations.
“That is like taking my blood pressure two years ago to find out if I’ll have a stroke today…it’s completely irrelevant.”
On Barbados being denied aid unless it fits a regional study, and how countries are asked to access capital based on outdated GDP data.
“The educational transformation we need is not about giving people knowledge.”
Because facts already exist in technology. What’s needed are values, attitudes, skills, a commitment to excellence, and empathy. You have to care about people.

And Trevor Noah added this, which is 100% facts:

“We find solutions when it’s war.”
No one has ever said we can’t. The atomic bomb was an impossible idea, and yet people said, find more scientists, more land, more resources. And they did.