|
Sometimes, the best lessons about success come from the oddest places.
In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.
[excerpt]
"The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.
When it doesn't get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.
Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing.
She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they'd get it too, if the mother didn't teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it."
[end excerpt]
Kind of redefines "helping," don't you think? What many people perceive as help is often really just a generous plate of sympathy with a side order of compassion and encouragement.
Sometimes true help involves a kick in the hindquarters or ripping off blinders so we can see. Tough love is as hard to give as it is to receive. A lot of people don't have what it takes to give it, or receive it, so they defer to platitudes.
The late Irving Stone spent a lifetime writing novelized biographies of men such as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.
Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of exceptional people. He said;
"They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they're knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And, at the end of their lives, they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do."
Success is not determined by staying on your feet, nor by how many times you get knocked down. The key - is getting back up.
: )
Linda
|