You’ll never...” While some say those are the most discouraging pair of words, others believe that no greater motivational exhortation has ever been uttered, disguised as a put-down.
Possibly, I agree. Meaning, I see both points of view.
“You’ll never get a body like that if you merely stand and watch!” exclaimed Mr Jones, the PE teacher. He was addressing the two of us — a classmate and I. And we, in turn, were observing — with unconcealed awe, I might add — another classmate, Freddy, who, in a masterly display of imitating a hand on a clock face turning time back, was spinning counter-clockwise on the parallel bars.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four and halt! Mr Jones called out. Then time stood still, it appeared, after winding back what seemed a whole day. Freddy dismounted, looking fresh as... well, perhaps the two of us, standing nearby, unexercised and un-wanting-to-exercise. Except, of course, we wanted to end up looking like Freddy, broad of chest with thickened biceps and well-delineated triceps, with two prominent ‘wing muscles’ on display each time the arms were held away from the body.
That, however, was a long time... and one torn shoulder-muscle ago. My fellow-watching colleague, on seeing me scream and fall from the bars clutching my shoulder decided he’d stick with his wiry beanstalk frame, thank you very much, and that he would, instead, take up sprinting for which, apparently, his body was more aerodynamically suited.
In this instance, my calamity overrode the jeering “You’ll never” offered by Mr Jones. I, in turn, slunk away to the cricket field, where there is always some place to hide a weak throwing arm — the slips, in this instance, where you nevertheless got to hone, or try to hone, as in my case I hasten to add, other sharpness skills, such as reflexes, failing which you are at certain liberty to blame your neighbouring slip for distracting you.
“You’ll never be good at Geography,” said my Year Nine teacher shortly thereafter, looking critically at a free-hand map of India I had produced, and halting just this side of hysterical laughter. I promptly took her at her word and failed with a regularity that must have thrilled her. Who knows, she might even have contemplated taking up a parallel profession in psychic predicting. It’s just as well she didn’t because she used to throw another classmate out of her classes with monotonous regularity and look what good it did him!
Dereliction of duty
“You’ll never amount to anything at all!” she used to exclaim, slamming the classroom door shut after he’d departed. It amazes me now, looking back, at how much freedom teachers wielded in beating down a spirit entrusted into their care for guidance on the road ahead. This is not to say that all of them, like some cabal high on addiction, resorted to ‘spirit bashing’. There were numerous dedicated teachers, one of them Miss Morris — a spinster who, it seemed, got so lost in the thickly forested halls of pedagogy, that she simply never found the time to find her own life companion.
She it was that said, “When someone tells you you’ll never, you’re supposed to say quietly to yourself, ‘I’d love to see that look on your face when I prove you wrong.’ Because there’s no greater sense of achievement than proving someone erroneous, who thinks they know you better than yourself. Because, truthfully, only you can know you. And in a way the person that says to you you’ll never is indirectly being a friend, it’s his way of saying, ‘Well go on prove me wrong.’”
That, I reckon, is solid advice worth passing on to members of yet another generation who will, undoubtedly, run into that stray hurdle, that high daunting barricade built on two words, “You’ll never...” When they do, they in turn will know how best to react.
“You’ll never” might just be the secret password to success.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
