I was watching one of my favorite YouTube woodworkers, Paul Sellers, recently and he explained how his son wanted a cello, so the two of them built one together. Later, after he had finished it, he was told it was one of the hardest instruments to build. He laughed and explained: “I didn’t know we couldn’t do it, so we did it.” (~23 minute mark of the below video.)

What if someone told Paul and his son at the beginning of the process that they couldn’t build a cello?
All this got me thinking of all the times people told me I couldn’t do something and the sad number of times I took them for their word. How many great works of art don’t exist because one human told another human that she “couldn’t do it.”

Sometimes ignorance is not only bliss, it’s enabling.