EVERY morning during my morning walk, I sweat it out, but that bit of hard work gives me good health. I meet a number of dreamers everyday, who dream of making it big and becoming billionaires, but who believe success and luck will fall into their laps: Gary Player for years was a great competitor in national and international golf tournaments. People constantly said to him, “I’d give anything if I could hit a golf ball like you.”
Upon hearing that comment one day, Player responded impatiently: “No, you wouldn’t. You’d do anything to hit a golf ball like me, if it were easy! Do your know what you have to do to hit a golf ball like me? You’ve got to get up at 5:00 every morning, go out to the golf course, and hit a thousand golf balls! Your hands start bleeding, and you walk to the clubhouse and wash the blood off your hands, slap a bandage on it, and go out and hit another thousand golf balls! That is what it takes to hit a golf ball like me!” His goal was to be at the top of his sport. That lofty dream requires practice, practice and more practice..!
Often we think that we can achieve nirvana and peace of mind by giving up everything, for those who dream of such lazy a life, Rabbi Harold Kushner tells a wonderful story about a bright young man who was a sophomore Stanford pre-med student. To reward him for having done so well in school, his parents gave him a trip to the Asia for the summer.
While there he met a guru who said to him, “Don’t you see how you are poisoning your soul with this success-oriented way of life? Your idea of happiness is to stay up all night studying for an exam so you can get a better grade than your best friend. Your idea of a good marriage is not to find the woman who will make you whole, but to win the girl that everyone else wants.
“That’s not how people are supposed to live,” the sage admonished. “Give it up; come join us in an atmosphere where we all share and love each other.” The young man had completed four years at a competitive high school to get into Stanford, plus two years of pre-med courses at the university. He was ripe for this sort of approach. He called his parents from Tokyo and told them he would not be coming home. He was dropping out of school to live in an ashram (a spiritual retreat).
Six months later, his parents got this letter from him: “Dear Mom and Dad, I know you weren’t happy with the decision I made last summer, but I want to tell you how happy it has made me. For the first time in my life, I am at peace. Here there is no competing, no hustling, no trying to get ahead of anyone else. Here we are all equal, and we all share.
This way of life is so much in harmony with the inner essence of my soul that in only six months I’ve become the number two disciple in the entire ashram, and I think I can be number one by June..!” There he was in the ashram, still sweating it out to achieve! So lets face it; you want to live well; sweat it out, there’s no other way..!
—Email: bobsbanter@gmail.com
