BARRIERS

So often, when you want something, you just have to take the initiative. You have to be bold. You see examples of it everywhere.
Recently I met the founder of the Royal Calahoo Garden Society. Any of you who know the size of Calahoo may well be surprised that such a tiny community could have a royal society. That designation is usually reserved for the bigger projects, like major provincial museums, or the highway between Edmonton and Calgary.
In fact, there were some cautious souls who suggested to the founder that it might be more legal to call it the Calahoo Garden Society, given that the Queen was not the one who bestowed its title. Now here was an unexpected barrier.
To a casual observer it might have seemed a small matter to change the name, but she had a vision, a hope for her new venture. She wanted it to be more than a garden society. She wanted it to be special, to be classy, more like a royal garden society than a plain old garden society. In defense of her position, searching for precedents, she aptly observed that the Queen probably didn’t eat at Royal Pizza, and may not have insured Buckingham Palace at Royal Insurance LTD.
If there ever was a danger, it has surely passed. I can safely publish this information now. Even if the Queen reads THE HOPE LADY Blog it will be too late for any meaningful punishment. The Royal Calahoo Garden Society stopped meeting a few years back and it never opened a bank account. In its wake it left its members with some great memories, some lasting friendships, the echoes of laughter and that special satisfaction known only to those who got away with something.
And to me—who was never a member—it has given a story, one more piece of conclusive evidence that the barriers we think we face are not always as real as they seem.