What's In Your Dictionary?: Custom Definitions

"What Does 'Impossible' Really Mean?"

The 'Season Summary of 2018' had a theme of thinking about and accomplishing the impossible. It was summarized by a statement in a Lewis Carroll novel challenging us to believe several impossible things before breakfast. So what does 'Impossible' really mean?

Several decades ago, even though I was a heavy computer user, I thought it was impossible for scanners to scan in a document and convert it to text. With all the various fonts and millions of possible discrepancies, how could we program a computer to recognize just one letter consistently? What about taking it to the next level with voice recognition? That seems much harder. Now we at the dawn of the age of robotics and artificial intelligence - where a car can drive without a driver and computers are capable of 'learning'.

So we have to stop thinking things are impossible, because many 'impossibilities' aren't! We have had 'Mission Impossible' for decades on TV, but it has become apparent in several advertising campaigns such that impossible has now become a common theme in 2019. It started with the Impossible Whopper. A few months later came Apple’s challenge to test the impossible.

We need to start by thinking a bit differently, so let's learn from a mistake from the famous Houdini

Now let's look at running - here is a quote from 100 Meter Women's World Record Holder:

And will another World Record be set by men this year at the other end of the running spectrum? Project 1:59 (first 1:42)

Considering how to apply this to Panther XC, let's just change our dictionary and redefine the word 'Impossible.'

It won't be the first time that definitions in the dictionary get modified, at least not on the big screen. It happened in Xanadu (First 30 seconds)

This season, we will develop our own custom dictionary. The word is out that this may be the defining moment in your athletic career - or even your life.