I have had the same conversation more times than I can count.

Someone tells me what they want. Then, almost in the same breath, they start building the case against it. The timing. The money. The competition. The person who already has the job. The fact that nobody from where they are ends up where they want to be.

And I say what I always say. There has to be a way. We just have to find it.

Then I get the look.

You know the look. The head tilts a little. The eyes narrow. There's nothing hostile in it. It's closer to concern, the way you'd look at a man who has misplaced his keys and hasn't noticed yet.

And then the words.

Come on. You have to be realistic here.

That word irritates me. It has for as long as I can remember. So this week I went and looked at where it came from.

The Origin

The word “realistic” shows up in English around 1829. It described art that was true to life, faithful to the scene sitting in front of the artist.

Two years later, in 1831, somebody turned it on a person's outlook. The practical view of life. The sensible one.

Sit with that for a second.

A painting earns the word realistic by accurately representing something that is already there. The bowl of fruit. The face. The harbor. You can only be realistic about a thing that exists.

Which means the word was never built to describe a future.

Nobody can be realistic about something that hasn't happened yet. There is nothing to be faithful to. When someone tells you to be realistic about your life, what they are doing is describing the room as it currently sits and handing you that description as a forecast.

In 2004 I walked through the doors at Morgan Stanley as an administrative assistant.

I told people I was going to be a Managing Director one day. Out loud. To anyone who asked.

And nearly everyone who heard it had a version of the same response.

That isn't how it works. Not from that desk. You need the school. You need the connections.

Almost none of it was said cruelly. They were just describing the room accurately.

They were painting the bowl of fruit.

A Little Magic

Some years ago my oldest son got the car he had wanted for a long time. A BMW.

He couldn't wait to get Apple CarPlay running in it. He'd talked about it before the car was even his.

Then he couldn't get it to work.

So he did the sensible thing. He took it to the BMW dealership. New car, current model, every piece of technology they build into one. He handed over the keys to a certified technician and sat in the waiting area.

The technician came back and told him the car didn't have that capability.

That night I asked him how it went.

He told me he wasn't going to be able to have it.

I said, but that doesn't make sense.

And he said, I know. But they're the experts. And they said I can't.

In most stories, that's the ending. You took it to the people who know. The people who know looked at it. The people who know said no. Anything past that point would be, by any reasonable definition, unrealistic.

It bothered me all night. The whole thing is software. That car was full of technology. It didn't make sense.

So I started reading. And somewhere in there I found something about a BMW app store, and that CarPlay was sold as a bundle you could purchase and download onto the vehicle.

Surely they tried that. Surely the certified technician with the training and the diagnostic equipment had tried the obvious thing.

I went downstairs and asked my son for the key.

He said, what are you doing?

I said, I just want to see something.

He said, Dad, the guy said it's not possible for this vehicle.

I said, I just want to try.

He went to bed.

I sat in that car and got it connected. I found the store. I found the bundle. I bought it and I downloaded it.

And Apple CarPlay came up on the screen.

I sat out there in the driveway opening the music. Opening the maps. Everything he had described wanting, working exactly the way he'd described it.

I'm not sure I can explain the feeling properly.

It felt like magic. Like I'd made something out of nothing, in a driveway, late at night, in a car an expert had already closed the book on.

And I could not wait for him to wake up.

But How?

The next morning I told him to go enjoy Apple CarPlay in his car.

He gave me the same bewilderment I've been describing this whole time. But how? The expert at the dealership said it was impossible.

And I told him something I believe as much as I believe anything.

There are times when the generally accepted answer won't make sense to you. And when it doesn't make sense to you, that's a little window. That's your window to give it a shot.

It's a car app. I know. Nobody's life changed that morning.

But it wasn’t really the app I wanted him holding onto as he pulled out of the driveway.

In His Own World

I know how all of this reads to some people. I've felt it in rooms for most of my life. That he doesn't get it. That he lives in his own world. That the willingness to chase the slimmest version of a possibility is a charming flaw in an otherwise capable man.

It gets read as a flaw. I understand why.

I'd still rather live in this world.

Because here's what I've come to. Being realistic isn't wisdom. It's a description of the room before you walked into it.

And every genuine moment of magic I've had, the big ones and the very small ones, arrived the same way. Somebody had already established that it couldn't be done. And I went and looked anyway.

Take the unrealistic out of a life and you take the magic out with it. What's left is an accurate painting of a room.

Your Window

So if you're carrying something right now that you've quietly stopped saying out loud because of how it sounds when you say it..., remember this:

You don't have to be realistic about it. You can't be. Nobody can be realistic about a thing that hasn't happened yet.

You only have to be willing to look at the part that doesn't make sense to you.

That's the window. It's usually smaller than you want. It's also usually open.

And when somebody gives you the look..., let them have it.

They're describing the room.

You're the one who's about to change it.

P.S. My book, Leadership at the Dinner Table, drops TOMORROW! I hope you’ll check it out.

With Absolute Sincerity,

Ed Clementi,

Founder & CEO of Inspired Fire, LLC

Make an Impact and Feel an Impact!