Is it possible to exceed your capabilities?
“Don’t just fly, soar.”-Dumbo Even when I feel that I have poured out all of my abilities and talents on a certain topic, I know within the far reaches of my mind that I can do even better.
I might be over-joyous at achieving a goal that I had made, but I know that those goals are only building blocks for me to set up more goals and attain them. This perpetual cycle relates to the quote, “Don’t just fly, soar” from the movie, Dumbo. This Dumbo quote is seemingly self-explanatory yet it has even deeper meaning. No matter how much can one achieve, they can go even beyond that, they cannot just fly and be a great flyer; they have to soar. I have always improved my writing abilities as time progresses, but I cannot let myself become satisfied by being simply remaining where I currently am. I have to strive to push my limits and go beyond flying, by soaring.
In the beginning of eighth-grade I admit that I believed myself to be an exceptional writer, (maybe not the greatest, but certainly above average) When I submitted one of my first Writing Workshop pieces (the Why I Write Project) to be edited by the teacher, I was expecting to receive back a paper unstained by corrections; I could not have been more wrong. I had thought that my writing was exceptional. Instead my paper was a sea of mistakes that the teacher had all pointed out for me to correct. I had to go home that very night and engage in laborious work on correcting my writing and exceeding what was considered to be the teacher’s expectations. Even when I had corrected my work to the point where I thought that I had reached my limits and could not go any further, I continued to I set a goal for myself to nitpick the small details of my work AND THUS! Begin to soar rather than fly, considering that my paper had been decently good from the beginning.
I realized by continually checking my own work that my writing was full of mistakes; thus preventing me from soaring. I recently finished my Change In Time historical narrative and have proved to myself while making the narrative that I will not repeat the error that I had done so in the past. I am ready to soar. I carefully examined my writing as I created my narrative, tweaking the smallest of details to depict the grand picture. As a result, I successfully formed an exceptional story full of details due to the time that I had invested in it.
The quote, “Don’t just fly, soar” does not necessarily pertain to actual flying; it is all about striving to improve in anything that you do in life, whether academics or hobbies no matter how good you already were. Considering that “the sky is the limit,” I have realized that there is far more room for me to extend myself. Perhaps the true point of the Dumbo quote is that flying and soaring is not all about the glory of achievement and being content in oneself. It is about being on a journey where you are happy about yourself, yet where you are always motivating yourself to be better than who you were and who you believe yourself to be and thus achieve the true concept of what it is to continually soar higher.
