Letter - After responding to columnist Tivania Moodley about generalising about Indian men, I thought she bounced back sumptuously with a really well-presented morsel in her piece, “With your one chance at life - follow your dreams” (POST, October 18-22).
And journalist, Chanelle Lutchman, merely galvanised the power of perseverance, with her article, “Chats student off to Oxford”, last week.
Read: Chats student off to Oxford
Success in any context will cost you blood, sweat and tears and it all begins with unflinching perseverance.
Take the example of two great men who laboured for years, each to accomplish their goals: Noah Webster to complete the dictionary, and Michelangelo to complete his revered painting, The Last Judgment.
Diamonds lie deep in the earth. Pearls lie concealed in oysters and gold has to be carefully mined. Your real talent lies deep within you which you may not have discovered as yet.
You must believe you are destined for great things. You must feel no limitations. You must demand and expect more. Act in the position you want to be treated and raise your bar.
I have found significant resonance with the Spanish philosopher who once wrote: “Everyone should be royal after his own fashion. Let all of your actions, even if they are not those of a king, be, in your own sphere, worthy of one. Be sublime in your deeds, lofty in your thoughts and in all your doings, know that you deserve to be king, even though you are not one in reality.”
Robert H Schuller writes in Tough Times Don’t Last, But Tough People Do that people are like potatoes.
After potatoes have been harvested, they are spread out and sorted in order to get the best value.
They are divided according to size: big, medium and small. It is only after they are sorted and bagged that they are loaded on to trucks.
But one farmer never bothered to sort the potatoes at all, yet he seemed to be making the most money.
A puzzled neighbour finally asked him: “What is your secret?”
He replied: “It’s simple. I just load up the wagon and take the roughest road to town. During the trip, the little ones always fall to the bottom, the medium to the middle and the big ones rise to the top.”
That’s not only true about potatoes, it’s a law of life also.
Big potatoes rise to the top on rough roads, and tough people rise to the top in tough times too.