HAVE YOU EVER TURNED A MINUS INTO A PLUS?

Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman called Thelma Thompson. “During the war,” she said, as she told of her experience, “my husband was stationed at an army training camp near the Mojave Desert, in California. I went to live there in order to be near him. I hated the place. I loathed it. I had never before been so miserable. My husband was ordered out on maneuvers in the Mojave Desert, and I was left in a tiny shack alone. The heat was unbearable- 125 degrees in the shade of a cactus. Not a soul to talk to. The wind blew incessantly and all the food I ate, and the very air I breathed, were filled with sand, sand, sand!

“I was so utterly wretched, so sorry for myself, that I wrote to my parents, I told them I was giving up and coming back home. I said I couldn’t stand it one minute longer. I would rather go to jail! My father answered my letter with just two lines- two lines that will always sing in my memory- two lines that completely altered my life:

Two men looked out from prison bars,

 One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.

I read those two lines over and over. I was ashamed of myself. I made up my mind I would find out what was good in my present situation; I would look for the stars.”

“I made friends with the natives, and their reaction amazed me. When I showed interest in their weaving and pottery, they gave me presents of their favourite pieces which they had refused to sell to tourists. I studied the fascinating forms of the cactus and the yuccas and the Joshua trees. I learned about prairie dogs, watched for the desert sunsets, and hunted for seashells that had been left millions of years ago when the sands of the desert had been an ocean floor.”

“What brought about this fascinating change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn’t changed. But I had. I had changed my attitude of mind. And by so doing, I transformed a wretched experience into the most exciting adventure of my life. I was stimulated and excited by this new world that I had discovered. I was so excited I wrote a book about it- a novel that was published under the title Bright Ramparts…. I had looked out of my self-created prison and found stars.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick says in his book, The Power to see it through, “there is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘The north wind made the Vikings.’ Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on cushion, but always in history, character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings.”

The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.

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