Nothing Is Impossible to a Willing Mind.

Andrew Duggan
Sep 9, 2018 · 4 min read
Zou Taofen

In his short essay “Nothing is Impossible to a Willing Mind” (1935), the Chinese writer Zou Taofen discussed how to change the impossible to the possible. In the essay he used the example of flight to illustrate his point. There was a time when few people believed that it was possible to fly in the air like “gods and spirits”- but some people thought differently. As early as 1809 George Cayley, an English engineer, inventor, and aviator put forward his dream, foreseeing a modern aircraft in terms of its mechanism and theories.

Cayley, eventually went on to build a craft for experiment, which he later fitted with a motor. Sadly, the machine was wrecked by explosions, but his efforts attracted the attention of people willing to research the possibility of flight. At the time Cayley was well known as a ‘philosopher’ but ‘quit’ this role to pursue his dream of flight, much to the amusement and ridicule of many around him.

Reading this essay and now living in China, I found myself reflecting on my own ideas, thoughts and current life context. Throughout my life I have had a ‘willing’ mind, and yet some people would tell me that what I wanted was impossible to achieve.

I recall being asked by my history teacher in secondary school “What do you want to be when you leave school?” Most of my class said ‘a train driver, a cook, a painter and decorator, a wife…..’. So I proudly stood up and told him “I want to go to university”. His response has stuck with me all these years later. He laughed, loudly and told the class that this was “impossible, no one like you goes to university”. Of course I did go to University, a number of times and gained more academic qualifications then he did.

Later in the 1980’s I decided to become a nurse. Male nurses were uncommon during this period. Nursing was considered a ‘female’ job…not even a profession. My friends, some of my family and some in the nursing school told me ‘You cannot be a nurse; the patients will not accept you it is a woman’s job’. I went on to qualify as a general nurse, a psychiatric nurse and as a health visitor in the UK. At the time I was one of the first male health visitors in the UK (a specialist community nursing role that focuses on maternal and child health).

Now I teach medical English to clinical medical students in China. Having devised a medical English teacher training course, I also teach Chinese clinical medical teachers. The first such course in the province. Prior to this role I taught clinical nursing at Fenyang Medical College and PhD students at Shanxi Medical University in Shanxi Province.

So …coming back to Zou Taofen and his essay. He concludes that nothing is impossible if you have the ‘right attitude’. This is not necessarily about being positive, more about an understanding that the greater the undertaking, the greater the complexity of the task the longer it may take to accomplish. I came to China in my early 50’s with no Chinese language skills and no real medium to long term plan. Life at the time seemed complex.

“Nothing Is Impossible to a Willing Mind”: Zou Taofen

So I devoted some of my time to learning about what it was ‘to be Chinese’ in this time. I devoted time to understating Chinese literature, in particular poetry. I also devoted time to becoming a teacher of medical English within a Chinese context. This opened up a way to live in China, to serve as an example to the students and others I met. It also created opportunities for me to share with Chinese people my ideas, intellect and culture and at the same time learn from them.

Zou Taofen was a pioneering journalist who played a key role in forming China’s national identity. He was also an important figure in introducing western scientific and literary ideas into China. The key to understanding the ideas in this essay, and much of his writing is to know that success or failure can be judged by the contributions you make to the task at hand. In other words…..if you have tried your best, overcome the fear of failure, go beyond what those that doubt you predict, challenge yourself on a daily basis…then you are more likely to be successful at the task you set for yourself no matter what the outcome.

Before Charles Lindbergh made the solo nonstop transatlantic flight of 32 hours, early aviation researchers and their experiments had failed time and time again. Like these experiments, my life in China has not been a simple matter. There have been setbacks and some disappointments. But, as Zou Taofen suggests, to achieve the impossible you need to find ways to endure these setback, to learn from them and to see mistakes and disappointments as friends that you can learn from.

I have learned that the more time I take to think, to plan, to go through countless procedures and be prepared to change these plans and ideas, the greater the possibility is that I will create possibilities for success.

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