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Saturday, October 01, 2005
Never give up
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Regarding Henry
"So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -- it's when things seem worst that you must not quit."
JACOB Rus once said: "When nothing seems to help I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps 100 times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the 101st blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
This statement comes into my mind as I remember the story of Musa Alami, the Arab man who made the desert to blossom as the rose - a desert that in all the history of the world had never blossomed before.
After graduating from the Cambridge University in England, Musa returned to Palestine where he became a well-to-do man. Then, in political turmoil, he lost everything, including his home.
Musa went beyond Jordan to the edge of Jericho. Stretching away on either side was the great, bleak, arid desert of the Jordan valley. In the distance to the left, shimmering in the hot haze loomed the mountains of Judea, and to the right the mountains of Moab.
With the exception of a few oases, nothing had ever been cultivated in this hot and weary land, and everyone said that nothing could be, for how could you bring water to it? To dam the Jordan River for irrigation was too expensive and, besides, there was no money to finance such a huge project.
"What about underground water?" Musa suggested. You must be kidding, the people who heard him laughed. Whoever heard of such thing? There was no water under that hot, dry desert. Ages ago, it had been covered by Dead Sea water; now the sand was full of salt, which added further to the aridity.
But Musa was determined. He thought he could find water under the ground. A few poverty-stricken refugees from the nearby Jericho Refugee Camp helped him as he started to dig with pick and shovel. Everybody laughed as this dauntless man and his ragged friends dug away day after day, week after week, month after month. Down they went, slowly, deep into the sand into which no man since creation had plumbed for water.
For six months they dug; then one day the sand became wet and finally water, life-giving water, gushed forth. The Arabs who had gathered round did not laugh or cheer; they wept. Water had been found in the ancient desert!
Of course, you know the rest of the story now. Criticisms did not deter Musa to abandon his plan. He had one goal: to prove them wrong. In the end, he triumphed.
"The tough job that tests your mettle and spirit is like the grain of sand that gives an oyster a stomach ache," someone once wrote. "After a time, it may become a pearl."
Never give up. If at first, you fail, try again. To get through the hardest journey, you need take only one step at a time, but you must keep on stepping.
"Life is a box of chocolate," said the Tom Hanks character in Forrest Gump, "you'll never know what you'll get."
A person can't get away from troubles and failures. Both are part of our lives. But they should not deter us from doing our best and to strive further. An unknown poet says it well: "When things go wrong as they sometimes will, when the road you're trudging seems all uphill, when the funds are low and the debts are high, and you want to smile, but you have to sigh; "When care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, as every one of us sometimes learns, and many a failure turns about when he might have won had he stuck it out.
"Don't give up though the pace seems slow -- you may succeed with another blow. Success is failure turned inside out - the silver tint of the clouds of doubt, and you never can tell just how close you are, it may be near when it seems so far.
"So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -- it's when things seem worst that you must not quit."
Now, to put you back in the mode of determination. Remember that event which happened during the 1992 Olympic Competition in Barcelona? From his seat in the top row of Montjuic Stadium, Jim Redmond saw exactly what 65,000 others watching the semi-finals of the men's 400-meter race saw.
A British runner named Derek was in trouble. But while the others only gasped and watched as Derek fell to the turf when he ripped his hamstring then picked himself up in a valiant effort to go on, Jim swept into action.
He raced down the stadium stairs, brushed aside a security guard, bounded over 1 4.5-foot wall, and rushed out onto the track. This was not just any runner. This was his son. When Jim reached Derek, he told his son.
"You don't have to do this." But Derek was determined to finish. So, arm in arm the young sprinter and his burly father limped toward the finish line.
Norman Vincent Peale reminds us: "Lots of people limit their possibilities by giving up easily. Never tell yourself this is too much for me. It's no use. I can't go on.
If you do you're licked, and by your own thinking, too. Keep believing and keep on keeping on." For feedback and comments, write me at tasyo2002@yahoo.com.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 1, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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