Just Do It | Achieving the Impossible
Just Do It | Achieving the Impossible
“I will find a way…or make one”
Throughout life we are constantly told to ‘be what you want to be’ and that ‘anything is possible’ but the actual reality we witness within ourselves and each other is far from this optimistic tone.
We’re encouraged to aim for the stars and genuinely believe it but have subconsciously bowed our wills to the forces of nature, the twists of destiny and the whims & wishes of others. As the years pile on, our dreams and the expectations we have of life have become severely dulled. The people around us encourage mediocrity in all our affairs (with good intentions).
“Choose this career path. Don’t go there. Behave like this.” Most damaging of all “That’s impossible.” All sensible advice to be honest but nothing extraordinary has ever come out of sensible people doing sensible actions.
Christian Bale challenging the naysayers
Take a minute to reflect inwards. How often have you felt stifled by your environment or society impeding your path towards something you really wanted? How often has it felt like destiny got in the way? How often have you looked yourself in the mirror and lied, ‘rejection is redirection’?
We’ve become complacent through years of sensible behavior and being okay with not achieving the exceptional or with how things are turning out in our lives. Are we really okay with it or have we just meekly accepted it?
Now, destiny, fate and the overwhelming pressures of environment are certainly true, for example, there are somethings in life you can’t overcome – like the Qattara Depression. Most other things however are surprisingly within our reach and take just the teensiest bit of willpower to achieve. Things that the world tells us are impossible.
Only centuries ago, flying would be considered impossible so too would the internet and countless other things. Had the creators of those inventions allowed their passions to be dulled by reality, I would not be writing this article and you would not be reading it.
Let’s take a trip down history lane and learn from some of the greatest masterstrokes in military history and how they can help us achieve the impossible.
Hannibal Crosses the Alps
Hannibal when people told him he can’t cross freezing mountains with elephants
The year is 218 BCE. The roman republic is unified and steadily expanding into the Mediterranean. The only other power to check its advance is the mighty Carthage; a trading civilization on the coast of Africa with a history and lore to rival the Greeks. The Romans and Carthaginians have been at war for years, neither able to break the power of the other. Enter Hannibal Barca. A brilliant military commander tasked with bringing the Roman republic to its heels.
Hannibal needs to get his army into Italy to give the Romans a right whopping but he has no way of getting there. The Romans rule the seas so a naval invasion would be suicide. The only other way is an insane route through Spain, crossing the freezing Alps and fighting off Roman garrisons and other tribes along the way. If the march doesn’t kill him, the disease, cold and lack of supplies would.
As the Romans argue where Hannibal might strike from, Hannibal rolls the dice and sets out on foot to cross the Alps. He reaches the foot of the mighty Alps located north of Italy and orders his army to cross it. In freezing conditions and nigh impassable terrain, they make the arduous journey up and down the mountains with elephants and eventually enter the Po valley (north Italy) completely surprising the Romans armies stationed there.
For the next 15 years Hannibal would rampage across Italy tearing Roman army after Roman army apart – a feat unheard of throughout Roman history. His decision to cross the Alps allowed Hannibal to surmount an impossible challenge and reap the rewards for years to come.
The Desert March
I couldn’t find an image from the 7th Century - don’t judge me!
Fast forward to the 7th Century CE, Khalid ibn Walid, one of history’s greatest military commanders who is known for never losing a battle (let that sink in for a moment, he never lost a battle) has been leading his army out of Arabia and deep into the Persian empire. He receives a new order informing him that Muslim armies invading Syria are facing large Roman forces and need immediate relief.
Khalid and part of his army must leave Persia and reach Syria in time to reach their fellow warriors. But the roads are all garrisoned by Roman forts. Fighting through each would whittle down Khalid’s relief force and strip him of previous time. One of Khalid’s men tells him of a desert route that bypasses all Roman fortification and can get him there in time. There is just one problem though – the desert route has no water and the only water source is at the end of the march and may or may not be there. The manoeuvre is risky, and no one has ever marched an army through such suicidal conditions. Khalid weighs his options and takes the plunge embarking on his now famous desert march. The army trudges through the hellish desert and after a number of painstaking days with almost no water finally reaches the water source. You know – the water source that they had no idea if it even existed!
Khalid resupplies his army, enters Syria and goes on to literally shatter Roman armies far larger than his throughout the entire region.
Case Yellow
Trust me guys, this is totally going to work
When Adolf Hitler came to power and initiated World War 2, of the many wacky ideas he developed or approved of, one of the wackiest was Case Yellow.
Case Yellow (the invasion plan for France) was purportedly developed by Erich von Manstein an up-and-coming military commander and one of the most successful commanders of the war.
In hindsight we look at Case Yellow and think it as a logically sound operation and something so obvious in its prospects for success but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“You want us to drive our tanks through a heavily wooded forest, cut the allied armies in half and then take Paris before anyone is the wiser” – Hitler’s generals, probably.
Case Yellow should have been impossible:
France has one of the finest armies in the world
France has better tanks than Germany
The Ardennes Forest is densely forested
The logistics would be a nightmare
Mechanised warfare & blitzkrieg was untested – would it even work?
World War One devolved into trench warfare and stalemate with France – who’s to say the same hellish experience won’t repeat itself?
All signs pointed to an absolute debacle but the only other way was a suicidal frontal assault against France’s well defended Maginot line fortifications. Hitler’s generals (supposedly) let him know how crazy this all was.
Mainstein however got his way, Case Yellow was given the green light and German forces positioned themselves for the assault.
German divisions burst through the Ardennes and ripped through the Allied lines. From there we all know how history played out and the fact that German dominance over Europe was secured for half a decade.
The lessons from these stories are in reference to the characters of the men involved but also the situations they were thrust into. Each of these commanders had a creative solution to impossible problems. Each harboured a disturbing level of self-belief whether for good or evil. Each saw a door where others only saw walls.
The situations themselves were desperately impossible scenarios. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the world was telling them to choose – the soldiers under their command, fellow officers, life experience, reality. A lifetime of structured thinking closes the mind off to the impossible and the magical.
But the prospects of achieving the impossible and the difficulty of the task at hand was too good for these individuals to pass up. They took the chance and for good or evil have found a place in the history books.
Achieving the impossible
You shouldn’t try to cross the Alps with elephants, nor should you venture into the desert without water – you’re welcome to try to invade France (I put the odds at 50/50) – however you should look at all the areas of your life where you have been making compromises in your dreams, goals and the things you want.
It’s never easy or sensible to entertain the impossible, which is why the society around you (which usually has the best intentions for you) will encourage you to stay on the highways and not to venture on the path less taken.
But chances are that the things you want, the dreams you have might only be found by taking the beaten track where no other has ventured before. No one can guide you to it and certainly not through conventional thinking.
So, if you have a wild aspiration or something that you really want but haven’t attained yet – don’t give up. Instead try this:
1. Decide on your goal: This should be independent of what others want from you and frankly from what you think is realistic to achieve
2. Think creatively: Come up with as many wacky, seemingly impossible solutions to achieve this goal. Let your imagination take over. Bonus points if it involves dragons.
3. Do the impossible: Chase it down with an uncompromising self-belief and single-minded vision.
4. Reap the rewards or try again.
Impossible journeys are always incalculably difficult, but everyone should cross their Alps at least once. It’ll be a fun story to tell the kids decades from now.
That one time the Ottoman army literally dragged ships across land to get to their enemy