I recently came across a proverb that felt less like gentle wisdom and more like a personal boundary with excellent branding:

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

Excuse me while I embroider this onto everything I own.

My whiteboard.
My kitchen table.
Possibly my forehead for high-stakes meetings.

There is something uniquely irritating about being mid-thought, mid-plan, mid-momentum and someone interrupts you not to build, not to question, not even to mildly derail in an interesting way but to say “That can’t be done.”

Oh.

Oh, we’re doing this?

You’ve stopped the train, not to redirect it, not to add fuel, but to inform me that trains are, conceptually, impossible.

Let’s talk about interruptions for a moment.

Not the charming kind. Not the “wait, tell me more” kind. Not even the chaotic but lovable tangent that somehow circles back to the point.

I’m talking about the interruption that arrives like an uninvited consultant:

“Actually…”
“That won’t work.”
“We tried something like that before…”
“Yeah, but…”

Ah yes. The Four Horsemen of the Can’t-Be-Done Apocalypse.

Psychologically speaking, these interruptions are fascinating.

Because they’re rarely about the idea itself.

They’re about:

Discomfort with uncertainty

Fear of failure (theirs, yours, everyone’s)

A deep, almost poetic attachment to the status quo

It’s not that it can’t be done.

It’s that it hasn’t been done by them, in a way that feels safe, predictable, and pre-approved by their internal committee of Caution.

Meanwhile, I am over here mid-sentence, mid-spark, mid-let me just try this one thing and suddenly I’m fielding objections like I accidentally opened a public comment period.

I didn’t ask for a panel discussion.

I was having a thought.

A beautiful, fragile, possibly brilliant thought.

And now it’s being pelted with tomatoes before it even gets to stand up.

Here’s the thing.

I’m not opposed to feedback.

I love a good challenge. A thoughtful question. A “have you considered this angle?” moment.

But there is a difference between engagement and interruption-as-extinguishing-device.

One expands the idea.

The other tries to quietly escort it out of the building before it causes any disruption.

And maybe that’s the point.

Doing things that “can’t be done” is, by definition, disruptive.

It doesn’t follow the script. It doesn’t wait for unanimous approval. It doesn’t politely check in with everyone’s comfort level before proceeding.

It just starts.

And that can be unsettling for people who prefer their world neatly categorized into:

Proven
Approved
Already attempted and filed under “no”

So yes.

I think I will put this proverb everywhere.

Not as a passive-aggressive message (okay, maybe a little passive-aggressive), but as a reminder to myself to keep going.

Even when the interruptions come. Even when the doubt is loud. Even when someone, somewhere, feels compelled to announce the impossibility of the thing you are actively doing.

Because here’s the quiet truth. Most things that “can’t be done”
are simply things that haven’t been done yet by the person currently talking.

And I, for one, would like to finish my sentence.

Thank you.