The Patchwork of Our Potential

“Every day opens and closes like a flower, noiseless, effortless.

Divine peace glows on all the majestic landscape,

Like the silent enthusiastic joy that

sometimes transfigures a noble human face.”

~John Muir, 1988, p. 13

Let’s start with a proposition or two or three. One proposition is this, “At birth, each person is endowed with a bundle of potentialities.” A second proposition is this, “Circumstances may support or hinder the development of each different potentiality one carries.” And a third, “No one reaches their full potential in every one of those.”

Conclusion: No matter how hard we try we will not reach our ‘full potential”.

Therefore, why worry about it?

Our potential is cumulative of many different pieces of who we are. There are so many variegated strips aggregated here, in this pail of personal potentiality:

• Potential earnings
• Potential athletic ability
• Potential to develop knowledge, skills, to learn
• Potential common…