Friday, May 26, 2006
What's troubling you?
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Regarding Henry
EVER heard of a Trouble Tree? One wise businessman has such kind of tree. It is located about a block away from his house, where he has to pass it every evening on his way home.
"When I reach that tall tree in the evening," he explains, "I leave all the troubles and worries of the day right there. Let them hang on the branches if they want to," I say to myself. "I'm through with them for the day. And I throw back my shoulders and stir up and a grin and get ready for a fine evening with my family."
He continues: "I used to take my troubles home to my wife, and often they would stay with me all night, and I'd get up the next morning with a grouch. But no more! I hang them on the Trouble Tree, and five nights out of six they have all blown away by morning."
Such a good idea, right? "No one should surrender to trouble, letting it crush him," advises Robert W. Young. "At the same time, no one should resent trouble as though it were an intruder. Trouble is a natural part of life. Consequently, it is wise to accept trouble and bear it without complaining."
Since time immemorial, troubles are always around. "Trouble has not diminished since man first turned from God," V.H. Lewis reminded. "It does not wear out. Its energy surges unabated. No laboratory is dedicated to its demise. No medicine paralyzes its clutching hand. No light eclipses its glare. The so-called progress of mankind has not led him from its kingdom of sorrow."
Good things about troubles. The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor men perfected without trials, so goes a Chinese saying. Trouble is a sieve for separating friends from acquaintances, J. Gustave White recaps.
Warning! Following are the names of the seven Mischievous Misses who are responsible for most of our troubles: Miss Information, Miss Quotation, Miss Representation, Miss Interpretation, Miss Construction, Miss Conception, and Miss Understanding.
"Don't listen to them," warns William J.H. Boetcker. Life is not easy, indeed. And troubles - either in the form of obstacles or hardships, make it harder. Life is not fair, most people think. But if these people study the lives of people in the past, they would discover that many of the world's greatest people have been saddled with adversities and disabilities but have managed to overcome them. The question is: Were they great people, or did their overcoming the difficulties make them great?
You, the judge!
Cripple him and you have a Sir Water Raleigh, an English adventurer and writer who was prominent at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Lock him in a prison cell, take away his freedom, take him out of the circulation, and you have a John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most famous religious allegories in the English language.
Call him a slow learner, tab him as being retarded, write him off as being uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein, Nobel laureate and perhaps the most well-known scientist of the 20th century. Load him with bitter racial prejudice and you have a Benjamin Disraeli, who for more than three decades exerted a profound influence on British politics.
Raise him in an abject poverty, make him struggle through political defeat after defeat, let him lose the love of his life, and you have an Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and one of the great men of history.
Strike him down with infantile paralysis, take away his legs, make him dependent utterly on others, and he becomes a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose unprecedented election to four terms as American president will probably never be repeated.
Stab him with rheumatic pains until for years he cannot sleep without drugs and you have Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-American electrical engineer and inventor.
Have him or her born black in a society, which is filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Harriet Tubman, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver, a Martin Luther King Jr., or a Nelson Mandela.
Make him the first child in an Italian family of 18 children, subject him to abject poverty, gift him musically, and you have an Enrico Caruso, an Italian dramatic tenor whose first great success was in Milan in 1898 when he created the role of Loris in Fedora.
Have him born of parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down when he is four years old, and you have an incomparable concert violinist, Itzhak Perlman.
Make him a second fiddler in an obscure South American orchestra and you have a Arturo Toscanini, an Italian conductor who brought great music to the attention of thousands of new listeners during a career that spanned nearly 70 years.
Deafen a musical genius composer and you have made a Ludwig van Beethoven.
Perhaps, only Mark Twain can dismiss all these adversaries in life humorously: "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
For comments, write me at tasyo2002@yahoo.com
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (May 26, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
