‘Throw your hat over’: Why you must do the thing you think you cannot

Have something you’re putting off? Take advice from this Irish phrase and just get it done, Frances Whiting says.

Frances Whiting. Picture: Tara Croser

I am a word nerd, always have been. Like all word nerds I began collecting them from an early age, delighting in phrases and words I had never heard before; I remember the first time I heard the word “serendipity” as a teenager, and just about spontaneously combusting with joy, both at its sound and its meaning. Oh yes, I was very popular with the cool kids in high school.

I particularly love hearing words and stories from other countries, because I believe sharing them tucks in the corners of our globe closer together.

This week, I heard a phrase from Ireland I was not familiar with, and I’d like to share it with you, just in case you might need to hear it and there’s a bit of serendipity around you reading this column today.

The phrase is, “Throw your hat over the wall”, and it’s attributed to the Irish writer Frank O’Connor.

In the ’60s he wrote a book called An Only Child and in it he recounts how, as a child, he and his gang of friends would roam the countryside, getting into mischief, and every now and again they would come across an orchard wall too high to climb. But they needed to get over it to get home, so one by one, they would take off their hats and throw them over the wall.

Throw your hat over it.

They did it because it meant there was no turning back. They did it because it meant they had to find a way to get themselves over that wall. They did it (I believe) because they had Irish mothers who would be furious with them if they returned home without those hats.

Those boys backed themselves into a corner, but more importantly they backed themselves. Years later, John F. Kennedy would borrow the phrase (and Americanise “hat” to “cap”) when committing to the space race, and putting a man on the moon: “This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it.”

Throwing your hat over the wall means fully committing to something, even if the outcome is by no means a certainty – perhaps particularly if the outcome is by no means a certainty.

It means if you are hesitating about something you want to do, or putting it in the too-hard basket, it means looking up at that wall and doing it anyway.

It means knowing all the odds, all the angles, all the obstacles, and doing it anyway. It means being a little bit scared, and doing it anyway. So go on, if there’s something you want to do and have been putting off for all sorts of reasons, perhaps it’s time to throw your hat over the wall.

I did, just this week after I heard this phrase, I sent my hat soaring across a wall I thought was insurmountable.

And to tell you the absolute truth, things didn’t turn out exactly the way I wanted.

But I don’t regret doing it, not for a minute, because what I discovered was that it didn’t matter.

Even though the outcome was not entirely what I’d hoped for, the release, the relief, the freedom, the sense of accomplishment and joy was not in the landing itself, but in the throwing.

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Originally published as ‘Throw your hat over’: Why you must do the thing you think you cannot