About A Bumble Bee And Not Giving Up

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway! – Mary Kay Ash

This is a quote that I’ve posted a while ago. It’s a quote that is very close to my heart. Today in a little conversation with one of my readers, The Fancy Banana, I started thinking about this quote and its meaning to me yet again.

The first time I came across this quote was years ago. It was when I was trying to help out a friend of mine, who was trying to find some sponsors. My friend was an athlete. She always was. In fact sport was her life. She was that good looking blond woman, fit and successful and driven. And then she had an accident skiing. The accident left her paralyzed.

I knew her before the accident but then I didn’t consider her my friend. I didn’t like the way she was then. We always kept in touch though and when she had her accident it touched me of course. I have to say that I started seeing the real her during her recovering time. I started seeing the upside of being so driven. Because she never gave up. At least not to us, watching from the outside, how she fought her way back into her new life.

As so many she too was told that she would never walk again. It was then when the bumble bee quote became her mantra. And she pushed. She also decided that she wouldn’t give up on professional sport and took up tennis again, getting to the point where she played the wheelchair tennis competition at Grand Slam level. It’s how she met her husband.

Today she is a different person. I think at least. For me she became a true friend. A very loyal and close friend. She is a wonderful mother and I’m sure a great partner and wife. Maybe the accident changed her, maybe it only highlighted the person she really always was.

As I said, she was told that she wouldn’t be able to walk again. Kind of like the bumble bee in the quote she did ignore that fact. She worked hard. She pushed, she tried, she never gave up. She walks. She can stand up. She walks short distances and she holds on to things but she walks. Just like the bumble be, she did it anyway.

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway! – Mary Kay Ash