By Harvey Mackay
A man was walking in the park one day when he came upon a cocoon
with a small opening. He sat and watched the butterfly for several
hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It looked like it had
gotten as far as it could, so the man decided to help the butterfly.
He used his pocketknife and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily, but something was strange. The
butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued
to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment the wings
would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would
contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the
rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed
wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that
the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly
to emerge was natural. It was nature's way of forcing fluid from its
body into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it
achieved its freedom. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need
in our lives.
If we were allowed to go through life without any obstacles, we would
be crippled. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.
And we could never fly.
History has shown us that the most celebrated winners usually
encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won
because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
My good friend, Lou Holtz, football coach of the University of South
Carolina, once told me, "Show me someone who has done something
worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity."
Beethoven composed his greatest works after becoming deaf. George
Washington was snowed in through a treacherous winter at Valley
Forge. Abraham Lincoln was raised in poverty. Albert Einstein was
called a slow learner, retarded and uneducable. If Christopher
Columbus had turned back, no one could have blamed him, considering
the constant adversity he endured.
As an elementary student, actor James Earl Jones (a.k.a. Darth
Vader) stuttered so badly he communicated with friends and teachers
using written notes.
Itzhak Perlman, the incomparable concert violinist, was born to
parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp and has been
paralyzed from the waist down since the age of four.
Chester Carlson, a young inventor, took his idea to 20 big
corporations in the 1940s. After seven years of rejections, he was
able to persuade Haloid, a small company in Rochester, N.Y., to
purchase the rights to his electrostatic paper- copying process.
Haloid has since become Xerox Corporation.
Thomas Edison tried over 2,000 experiments before he was able to get
his light bulb to work. Upon being asked how he felt about failing
so many times, he replied, "I never failed once. I invented the
light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected President of the United States
for four terms, had been stricken with polio at the age of 39.
Persistence paid off for General Douglas MacArthur. After applying
for admission to West Point twice, he applied a third time and was
accepted. The rest is history.
In 1927 the head instructor of the John Murray Anderson Drama
School, instructed student Lucille Ball, to "Try any other
profession. Any other."
Buddy Holly was fired from the Decca record label in 1956 by Paul
Cohen, Nashville "Artists and Repertoire Man." Cohen called Holly
"the biggest no-talent I ever worked with."
Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director Woody Allen
failed motion picture production at New York University (NYU) and
City College of New York. He also flunked English at NYU.
Helen Keller, the famous blind author and speaker, said: "Character
cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of
trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared,
ambition inspired and success achieved. Silver is purified in fire
and so are we. It is in the most trying times that our real
character is shaped and revealed."
Mackay's Moral: There is no education like the university of
adversity.
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