Everybody to the Limit!

(The Cheat, he's to the limit! Everybody, come on Fhqwhgads!)

I used to hate the phrase, "The sky's the limit." When I was young, it didn't make any sense to me.

It sounded like it was trying to say that the only limit on mankind was a distant, unreachable one, and that there were endless possibilities even with this limit on us. That didn't make any sense to me, because the metaphor was the sky, and with the advances in technology this past century, we've gone up and above the sky, into Outer Space (Quick question: is there a better term for that? 'Space' doesn't work, because everything is space. Hmm...)

As I got older, I talked to others who had the same opinion as I. Originally, I though I was alone in this line of thought, but I realized this was the general agreement on the matter. And of course, whenever something becomes the general agreement, I have to find a way to question it.

So I thought. I did research. And I formulated a new opinion.

"The sky's the limit" is thought to have originate just before WWI, after the invention of the flying machine by Wilbur and Orville Wright. The idea, at the time, was that there were endless possibilities, and no one could know what could be done, since before the flying machine was made no one seriously believed it could be done. It was, at the time of it coinage, a literal and figurative mixed metaphor.

Now, however, the meaning of the phrase has changed. What once meant "It is possible to achieve more than one thought possible" now means "There is no limit."

Because the sky ISN'T the limit. We've reached outer space; we've proved the old adage wrong, and broken through all the barriers that limited us. Mathematically speaking, it's a proof by contradiction.

I think that this is something that everybody has to consciously think about. This, I believe, is a wonderful idiom that stands apart from some of the more popular metaphorical idioms. I would love to see this idiom survive the decade of doubt and restructuring and make it through to inspire future generations. Isn't that so poetic of me?