Don’t Believe : The Exit

There is a biscuit
larger than a hole in a sheet of paper.

Place the biscuit over it.

It cannot pass through.

Measure them.

The biscuit is too large.
The hole is too small.

The answer seems obvious:

It cannot pass through.

Unless you make the hole bigger,
or make the biscuit smaller.

There seems to be no third answer.

But what if you fold the paper?

The hole has not been cut larger.
The biscuit has not become smaller.

And yet,
what could not pass through before
now can.

So what, exactly,
did “impossible” mean?

We are used to trusting our eyes.

We see a hole,
and assume that is the shape of the exit.

We see a wall,
and start looking for a door.

We see a distance between two points,
and start calculating how long it will take to cross.

None of this is wrong.

But we rarely ask one more question:

Does the exit have to remain
the shape it is now?

Sometimes we approach life in much the same way.

When we want to escape a difficult situation,
we start looking for an exit.

If the exit is too small,

we try to make ourselves smaller.

Want less.
Endure more.
Give something up.

If we still cannot get through,

we try to make the exit bigger.

Work harder.
Hold on longer.
Push a little more.

Until one day,
we sit there staring at the opening
we still cannot pass through
and begin to wonder:

Maybe there is no exit at all.

But we rarely question something else:

Why must the exit be this hole?

Perhaps what limits us
is not always the size of the hole.

Perhaps it is a premise
we have already accepted:

The paper must remain flat.

As long as that premise remains untouched,
every calculation can be perfectly correct.

The hole really is too small.
The biscuit really is too large.
It really cannot pass through.

Some things we call “impossible,” then,
are not mistakes.

They are simply correct answers
within a set of premises
we never thought to question.

Perhaps those are the hardest limits to notice.

Mistakes are easy to challenge.

But when the reasoning is sound,
the numbers are correct,
and reality itself seems to have proven the answer
again and again,

we rarely touch it anymore.

We keep asking:

How can I make the biscuit smaller?

How can I make the hole bigger?

How can I force it through?

Without noticing that

the paper can be folded.

When the paper is folded,

the relationships that existed on the flat surface change.

The exit has not disappeared.

The obstacle has not disappeared.

Nothing even needs to be defeated.

The original problem
simply no longer exists
in quite the same way.

This is not the same as saying
“there is always a way.”

Some walls are real.
Some losses cannot be undone.
Some limits cannot be changed by willpower.

The world does not promise
that every problem has a solution.

But before declaring
that there is no exit,

perhaps we can still ask:

Am I seeing the shape of the world,
or merely the shape the world takes
in this particular arrangement?

We tend to imagine
that an exit is something waiting to be found.

It must already exist somewhere.

A door.
A light.
A path leading outside.

Find it.
Walk through.

The story is complete.

But perhaps some exits do not appear that way.

They are not hidden too well.

We are not simply failing to see them.

Within the original structure,
they may not be exits at all.

Not until something is folded.

Not until certain distances are brought closer.

Not until relationships
we assumed were fixed
begin to change.

Only then can a place
that was never a path before
become one.

So,

if something still cannot pass through,

perhaps there is no need
to make yourself smaller just yet.

And perhaps you do not need
to break through the world either.

Look at the paper.

And ask:

What if the only shape
I thought an exit could take
is not the only shape it can take?

Don’t believe.

Not even the exit
you can see with your own eyes.