Possibility –– it’s one of my favourite words. Derived from the Latin, possibilis, “able to be done,” possibility walks hand-in-hand with hope, potential, and the idea that there is always room for something else to emerge, something different, unexpected and exciting. It’s how I feel about sunsets, sandcastles and Spring. It’s how I feel about white walls and lumps of raw clay. It’s how I feel when I come home from a holiday, or when two colours merge to create a new one. I have a ring –– my most treasured ring –– that is a small and brilliant diamond, secured within a bezel and surrounded by a moat of gold. The design is utterly simple, and while I love it as it is, I sometimes imagine tiny diamonds floating in the “moat”, or one day filling it with cerulean enamel. I love that the negative space around the stone leaves room for possibility. Much harder for any of us to accept is that alongside the beauty of possibility comes the terror of it. And that even though we know that possibility as a concept is free and fluid and unwritten, and that we have little to no control over its movement, we still shut ourselves off from the possibility of that which we fear. To embrace possibility is to embrace every facet of a multifaceted thing. Even the surfaces that the light does not touch. And hope that, “able to be done,” means that we will survive –– and maybe even thrive –– for having held it.
