October 25, 2023

Overcomers

By Curtis Peter Van Gorder

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.—Helen Keller

Perhaps you have heard some of the famous stories of men or women who overcame great difficulties before they made some outstanding achievement. Each of their stories provides insights into what it takes to overcome in the midst of great struggles.

Don’t give up! Edison tried thousands of different materials unsuccessfully before discovering the carbon filament that lit the first practical lightbulb.

It was he who said things like, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

Edison’s lab was once completely destroyed in a fire. As the fire blazed, he reportedly turned to his son and said, “There go all our mistakes [failures]!”

From the ashes, he rebuilt his lab and went on to become one of the world’s most famous and prolific inventors.

As the saying goes, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”

Be joyful. Beethoven wrote the famous Ninth Symphony when he was completely deaf by transferring the music he heard in his heart to written musical notes. Consider these opening lines of the chorale of the Ninth Symphony, which were written by a deaf man.

Oh friends, not these tones!
Rather let us sing more cheerful and more joyful ones.
Joy! Joy!
Joy, thou glorious spark of heaven.

Helen Keller, who became a famous lecturer despite being deaf and blind, said, “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”

Forget about your own problems and reach out to others. What did Helen Keller think about the tragic loss of her sight and hearing? This is what she wrote as a young girl: “Sometimes a sense of loneliness covers me like a cold mist—I sit alone and wait at life’s shut door. Beyond, there is light and music and sweet friendship, but I may not enter. Silence sits heavy upon my soul. Then comes hope with a sweet smile and says softly, ‘There is joy in forgetting one’s self.’ And so I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun ... the music in others’ ears my symphony ... the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”

Turn setbacks into stepping stones. Did you know that John Bunyan wrote much of his masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress, while serving time in prison? And Cervantes drew on his experiences in captivity for Don Quixote?

Byron Pitts is a renowned American journalist and author. He was still illiterate at the age of 12 and had a terrible stuttering problem, which he worked hard to overcome. In a commencement speech to college graduates he said, “There are stepping stones in life. Everything you perceive as bad is God preparing you for some task.” And in an interview, he said, “My mother raised us to believe, as the Bible says, ‘Count it all joy.’ Everything in life is meant to grow us. There are no stumbling blocks; there are stepping stones.”

Learn from your problems to have sympathy for others. One of the most famous singers of all time was the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). Caruso’s favorite saying was, “Bisogna soffrire per essere grandi.” Which means, “To be great, it is necessary to suffer.” Caruso’s early life was full of difficulties. His mother gave birth to seven children. Only Caruso and two of his siblings survived. His family was poor. It wasn’t until he was 18 that he was able to buy his first pair of new shoes with the money he earned from singing at a resort. In one of his first publicity photographs he is wearing a bedspread, draped like a toga, because his only dress shirt was being washed at the time.

Perhaps his poverty contributed to the richness of his character and his voice. There was something magical about his voice that brought him great riches and fame. A fellow performer observed, “His is a voice that loves you, but not only a voice, a sympathetic man.” An amusing illustration of Caruso’s sympathetic nature can be found when during an opera performance, one of his fellow singers lost his voice and could no longer sing. Caruso sang his part while the hoarse singer mouthed the song.

See beauty in the mud. Surely, there are many more stories waiting to be discovered of people who overcame their difficulties. They give us hope that, if they could do it, so can we. Here is one I recently uncovered:

I was asked to lead a demonstration in a science museum that was opening in our city. I was to perform various experiments and to explain them to the children. In preparing for one of the experiments of blowing soap bubbles using three-dimensional frames, I came across the story of Joseph Plateau. While studying the aftereffects of the sun on the retina, he looked directly at the sun for 25 seconds, and he eventually went blind.

However, he did not give up in despair, but continued in his scientific studies. He went on to write books on the nature of liquid surfaces by asking others to tell him what they observed during his experiments and then had someone else write his findings down. The laws of liquids that he discovered are still being used today, such as the law that a liquid surface will always go the smallest area possible.

I was amazed at this man’s fortitude. He must have felt extremely remorseful that he had caused his own blindness due to his mistake, yet if he did, he did not surrender to condemnation, but continued on with the help of others.

It was also very interesting to note that related to his findings, they have since found protozoan creatures that live deep in the ocean mud that have similar structures to the results Plateau discovered with his soap bubble experiments.

I went online and was in awe at the beautiful creatures that live deep in the ocean mud. God didn’t have to make them so beautiful, but perhaps He was trying to show us a lesson through these simple microscopic creatures that He can take our lowly mud and make something wonderful from it.

But in the mud and scum of things,
There always, always something sings.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted in: failure, guest contribution, perseverance, positive thinking