"Most times that something seems impossible, it's not" - my mom
The context she said it in was when I was really tiny and we had to stay overnight in Tehran because we missed a flight, and the lady at the airline desk said that it was impossible to accommodate us in a hotel or something.
My mom refused to settle, got the issue taken up to the branch head, and then got us accommodated in a hotel room. It's company policy, she doesn't have any options available to her etc.
That was real important to me; ultimately, a person made these policies and a person could get around these policies. So let's talk and work something out.
That idea has been very fundamental to my life for as long as I can remember, and a big part of who I am as a person.
As a simple example, the first time you try to open up a computer, shit seems arcane, like you need a PhD in rocket psychology to know wtf is going on. But then you break it down, identify each part, and hey, it's not so tough any more, it's a pretty simple, logical system of parts.
Such is the case for most things. Any time you say "I can't do XYZ", what your brain is actually saying is "I cant be assed to do XYZ because it's several steps removed from me."
I'm sure anyone familiar with computers and programming knows this on some level too. When someone says it's "not possible" to do something, it almost always means "I don't know how".
About 6-7 years ago, I was trying to have a dynamic website made for my company. Our existing site functioned well but I was inspired by a site called
https://dontclick.it and wanted something similarly slick. So I called a fuckload of "web developers" in Pakistan (I didn't want a firm, I wanted a talented individual to hire onto my staff to work on my website full time, and make them for clients, so I just asked if they could make a site like it) and almost invariably got the answer "no sir, it's not possible".
Fuck you. It's not possible for YOU, because YOU don't have the skillset to do it, and lack the most important of all skills i.e. LEARNING.
The person I offered the job to was a guy who said "I'm sorry, I don't know how to do this. Can I have a callback number? Please give me two weeks to research it, and I'll get back to you." He still works there to this day.