Turning Old Clichés into New Maxims:
All You Can Do Is All You Can Do
By
Richard Eyre
Note: This column appears every two weeks
… with an old cliché replaced by a new maxim each time.
Click
here to read the full introductory column. Click
here to go to the Cliches archives
This
cliché is often used as an antidote to other clichés that seem
unrealistic and create false hopes: “The sky’s the limit,” “You
can do anything you set your mind to,” and so on.
Indeed
it is good to be realistic, and it can be depressing and harmful
always to expect more of ourselves than we actually deliver. So
we say, “All you can do is all you can do.”
Yet
the things that inspire us most are instances and situations when
someone seems to go beyond their natural potential, rise
above the expected level, beat the odds.
Most of us, at least
in the small, personal, everyday sense, believe in miracles. Love,
loyalty, or other emotions sometimes carry us beyond what we though
we could do or feel. And in times of supernatural need, most of
us believe in the possibility of some form of supernatural help.
*
I have a special friend, who,
over the years, has taught me a great deal about the word synergism.
He is a management consultant and trainer, and I first heard him
speak of synergism in the business context. He defined the word
as a situation where the total is greater than the sum of its
parts, where executives or employees, working well together and
compensating for one another’s weaknesses, are able to accomplish
more together than the combination of what they could accomplish
separately.
Later he taught me that as good a word
as it was in business, synergism had its most magical application
in personal and family life, where marriage partners, supporting
and complementing each other, rise to a higher real; where children
feel a security and an identity bigger than themselves, where
family members, helping and encouraging each other, grow and develop
far beyond what they could do by themselves. In that context,
synergism is the step we can take toward allowing miracles into
our lives.
*
These
are at least three types of synergism that allow us to do more
and become more than we otherwise could:
- Physical Mental Synergism. The mind and the body can be renewed
by each other. When our minds are active, stimulated by new
ideas, pulled out of the rut of routine, we are physically
renewed, we feel more energy, and we are more resistant to
disease. And when we take care of our body — when we eat right
and exercise — our mind is quicker, sharper.
- Husband-Wife Synergism. Those who are married have the
opportunity to create a union in which both partners, buoyed
and lifted by each other, go beyond what they could do on
their own. Too often we do the opposite. We compete with each
other instead of finding ways to complement each other, and
we think equality means doing the same things as each other
rather than analyzing our individual strengths and weaknesses
and figuring out who will play which roles within the family
and household.
- Divine Synergism. The most powerful form of synergism and the instance
when we can go farthest beyond our own potential or capacity
is when we draw down into us a high power and greater insight.
People who learn to pray, to meditate, to center themselves
and exercise faith discover how limited they are by themselves
and how unlimited they are with God.
The deeper meaning of synergism is that by ourselves we are
limited, but that we can combine ourselves in ways that
expand these limits. Combinations within ourselves, within our
marriages, and within our spiritual lives can carry us beyond
where we though we could be. The ultimate display of synergism
is miracles.
People who acknowledge of admit “ceilings” too readily take
the excitement and possibility out of their lives. People stop
progressing in their careers as soon as they say, “This is as
far as I can get,” People start to decline physically as soon
as they say, “I’m over the hill.” And discouragement and boredom
set in when we say, “Well, realistically I’m never going to be
what I once thought I could.”
When our thoughts are bounded by limits, we need the simple
new maxim:
BELIEVE IN MIRACLES
The key to rising above our “ceilings” is not some kind of
pseudo-pep talk or artificial “positive mental attitude.” It is
working at creating synergism in our lives and in our relationships.
It is believing in something beyond ourselves.
Join me in another fortnight (in two weeks) for a cliché about
the confusion of whether we work to live, or live to work.
