FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE

Thankfully, the days when I have felt a bit of motivational dampening despair have been relatively few during my life. I think one of the reasons I have been fortunate enough to minimize my down times, is that in my early years, I was a constant consumer of biographies of men and women who became my heroes and at least for short bursts, my mentors.

One of the biographies I remember was that of Robert Edwin Peary, who became the first recorded man to reach the North Pole. Robert grew up in a household without a father and spent his early years finding his role models and heroes in the written word. After reading about the adventures of Elisha Kane in the Northlands, Peary set his major goal for life – he was going to reach the North Pole.

Years later his history records these events, which took place at Fort Conger during his first attempt to reach the North Pole, near the northern tip of Greenland. A capsule of these days reads like this. Peary is in an abandoned cabin lying on his back in pain. A few days before in the frozen wasteland he had eaten the last of his biscuits and beans. A dog had been killed to sustain the group. Finally, they were able to stumble back into the little cabin. Removing his boots Peary found his toes frozen. For six weeks he lay in dreary darkness in the frozen north in agonizing pain. In the midst of all this he turned on his side and wrote with his finger on the cabin wall these words of the ancient philosopher Seneca: “I shall find a way or make one.”

As it is said, the rest of the story is history. After giving seven toes and almost his life, after two unsuccessful trips, Peary at the age of fifty-two finally made a way. Using a boat with thirty inch thick walls, enduring the stench of seventy tons of whale meat, the companionship of forty-six howling and fighting dogs, Robert Edwin Peary in April of 1909 made the North Pole yield up its loneliness.

In a day when many have fallen captive to the opium of the dole, we would all do well to fill the motivational part of our memories with examples and heroes like Peary.

In a day when it is evident that there is an abundance of needs, why do we so often sit back mourning the lack of opportunity?

In a day when we see so many who are so quick to throw in the towel and yield to the dampening doldrums of despair, maybe we could all add those words of Seneca, which Peary wrote with his finger on the cabin wall in the frozen days at Fort Conger, “I will find a way or make one,” to the magnets, cartoons and children’s drawings which decorate our refrigerators.

Indeed, opportunities abound. There is a world to feed and clothe. There are tremendous social, emotional and economic problems to be solved. There are crimes which need to be eliminated and laws which need to be modified. There are heads which hang down and arms which need lifting up.

Indeed, the world is deeply in need of new discoverers – those who will pay the price to make or find a better way – those who will march to places where none have ventured before.

Once we envision our days as days of blessings and boundless opportunities – we begin to gain a vision with eyes that see unknown horizons – we begin to broaden our understanding with ears tuned to the needs of mankind – we once again begin to build with callused hands – we begin to multiply our accomplishments with backs bent toward reaching our objectives – we once again realize that goals are not unfulfilled fantasies of youth, but goals are unreached realities of individuals and nations who have determined that they “can find a way or make one.”