My two year old is crazy. Aren’t they all? The other day he and my wife were in the car on the way home, and he asked to go to the beach. More specifically, he demanded that she turn the car around and go to the beach. We live in metro-Atlanta, there are no beaches here. The closest beach would take at least 5 hours to reach. But, in his mind, it was a short drive down the road.

Then, yesterday morning my two-year-old found a t-shirt of mine that another kid had ripped to shreds. Side note, why would a kid do that? I mean, really? Anyway, my two-year-old brought me the shirt to show me it has been destroyed. Then he said, “I fix it, daddy! Where the tape?” In his mind, he was going to tape my shirt back together, making it good as new.

This is what I love about two-year-olds and what mine is teaching me. All things are fully possible for him at any moment. Sure he can be at the beach in ten minutes; he has no concept of time and space. Sure, he can repair a cotton shirt to perfection with scotch tape, who couldn’t? At this stage in his life, he can be anything, do anything and go anywhere instantly and without effort. It’s a pretty amazing way to live.

Contrasting his thinking with mine, I realize I’m regularly under-indexing my ability and selling myself short. My goals are too low, my thoughts too contained. I’m overly aware of what “can’t be done” and only vaguely open to dreaming so big is frightens me.

There is something about getting older that makes the world of possibilities shrink around us; only it doesn’t have to. I want to be more like my two-year-old, believing I can do the impossible and willing to try until I fail. And when I fail, I’ll do exactly what he would do; I’ll try something else new, and something else and something else after that. Two-year-olds love to try and do, they love to explore and be.

Two-year-olds believe they can conquer the world, and I think they can too. Today, I want to be more like that.