A LESSON WORTH MORE THAN A GOLDMINE

“Hope fills the holes of my frustration in my heart.”

- Emanuel Cleaver

Boredom and frustration. A deadly combination that is!

I was teaching Kavish, today morning. Kavish had to do a lot of monotonous work and I could sense his frustration and boredom. “Sir, can I do it at home?” Kavish asked me, at one stage.

“No Kavish, “finish it here itself.

“Okay sir,” Kavish said obediently and continued with his work. But, soon, I could sense the reluctance which was telling in his work. I knew, it was best if he did it at home instead of doing a shoddy work like this. So, I said, “Okay Kavish, do it at home.”

“Thank you sir,” Kavish was relived…

“Kavish, let me tell you something before you go,” I said.

Kavish was willing to listen…

“Kavish, you are very fond of physical fitness… you do Yoga and jogging regularly… You play football and you are obsessed with it. Now, you can relate to what I am telling you: If you learn to handle the initial boredom and frustration in any new thing that you undertake, you can expect to see great results later. Remember, you don’t get body muscles as soon as you start gymming… You don’t get mastery over the Asanas as soon as you start doing Yoga… Ditto for football… and ditto for anything else in life… be it dancing, drawing, computing, singing whatever. Let’s just look back at our nursery days… how our early nursery teachers held our tender hands and taught us to write A, B, C, D… It was such a slow process… It took such a long time to get our hands on it… Imagine the patience, love, care and faith our early teachers showed… Imagine if they had  given up on us, and imagine if we had given up on ourselves, at that very early age!

Yes, because we patiently handled our own boredom and frustration in our early stages, we are here…

Giving up early has been mankind’s biggest regrets. Time and again, we have seen how people, who had given in to the early boredom and frustration have later felt terribly sorry for their mistakes…

I told Kavish the story I had read in Napoleon Hill’s book, ‘Think and Grow Rich’ when I was going through a tough phase in my own life. I had just come to Bombay and I was jobless… I was penniless and hungry… Hope was fast waning, and, just during this period, I had picked an old copy of Napoleon Hill’s classic on the roadside. 

To teach the lesson on persistence, Hill had shared the story of R.U. Darby, one of the top business men of his time. It was the time people in America rushed frantically to dig gold. So, when Darby was a little boy, his uncle, too, invested a large sum of money in land and equipment and rushed to dig gold. But, the land where Darby’s uncle was digging showed no results even after months and months of digging… There was frustration and panic… Hope had died out. Finally, Darby’s uncle gave it up… He sold all his equipment and ‘barren’ land to a junkman, dirt cheap… The junkman, who was smart, consulted an ‘expert’ in the subject… who concluded that the gold lay just three feet away from where Darby’s uncle had stopped!

All that the junkman had to do was to dig three feet away from ‘the point of frustration’ to go home with millions!

I saw light on Kavish’s face… It shone there like gold!

An hour ago, Kavish called me, “Sir, I have placed an or order for the book, ‘Think and Grow Rich',” he said, “That story was too inspiring!”

Yes, it was. I, too, had read it when I was about to quit three feet away from my own point of frustration…

Darby had confessed to Napoleon Hill saying that, this story of his uncle had taught a lesson in his life worth more than a goldmine!

Another wise man, T.F. Hodge, said: “To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.” 

How true!

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Rajesh R. Nair