What we haven't mastered...yet

My son, Jonah, is four and a half and learning to write his name.
We sit and eat breakfast and we look at the fridge.
Two dinosaur magnets hold up his masterpiece:

a piece of paper on which he has twice
drawn his first and last names.

I say drawn intentionally, because he made shapes,
he formed lines and curves and connections between.

He did not write because he is still learning how.

There is nothing simple about the ways he had to
focus, the way he willed his fingers to grip the pencil
and push it in the way he knew he should.

I feel his pride in the kitchen. I see it in his eyes.

What he's done is hard, but he never doubted he could do it.
He exhausted himself, but never did he hesitate.

He was hopeful because he believed.
He was resilient because he knows, deep down,
"I will get this. I will learn to write my name.
And as I do, it will get easier."

Hope only exists when we believe things can change,
when we adopt that mindset of growth and resilience
that begins in a whisper,

"I can't do this yet.."

then screams in crescendo,

"But I will not stop...I will not stop...because
I believe."

My son believes and, at four and a half,
why should he not?

For he has not yet learned the word
impossible. He has not learned to fail.
He has only learned to press on regardless
in hopeful pursuit of what he hasn't mastered
yet.