Part Two In A Nutshell 8 страница

longed to be a singer. But her face was her misfortune. She had a large mouth and

protruding buck teeth. When she first sang in public-in a New Jersey night-club-she tried

to pull down her upper Up to cover her teeth. She tried to act " glamorous". The result?

She made herself ridiculous. She was headed for failure.

However, there was a man in this night-club who heard the girl sing and thought she had

talent. " See here, " he said bluntly, " I've been watching your performance and I know

what it is you're trying to hide. You're ashamed of your teeth. " The girl was

embarrassed, but the man continued: " What of it? Is there any particular crime in having

buck teeth? Don't try to hide them! Open your mouth, and the audience will love you

when they see you're not ashamed. Besides, " he said shrewdly, " those teeth you're trying

to hide may make your fortune! "

Cass Daley took his advice and forgot about her teeth. From that time on, she thought

only about her audience. She opened her mouth wide and sang with such gusto and

enjoyment that she became a top star in movies and radio. Other comedians are now

trying to copy her!

The renowned William James was speaking of men who had never found themselves

when he declared that the average man develops only ten per cent of his latent mental

abilities. " Compared to what we ought to be, " he wrote, " we are only half awake. We

are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the

thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers

of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. "

You and I have such abilities, so let's not waste a second worrying because we are not

like other people. You are something new in this world. Never before, since the

beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again

throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again. The

new science of genetics informs us that you are what you are largely as a result of

twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomes

contributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomes comprise everything that

determines what you inherit. In each chromosome there may be, says Amran Sheinfeld,

" anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes -with a single gene, in some cases, able to

change the whole life of an individual. " Truly, we are " fearfully and wonderfully" made.

Even after your mother and father met and mated, there was only one chance in

300, 000 billion that the person who is specifically you would be born! In other words, if

you had 300, 000 billion brothers and sisters, they might have all been different from

you. Is all this guesswork? No. It is a scientific fact. If you would like to read more about

it, go to your public library and borrow a book entitled You and Heredity, by Amran

Scheinfeld.

I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourself because I feel deeply

about it. I know what I am talking about. I know from bitter and costly experience. To

illustrate: when I first came to New York from the cornfields of Missouri, I enrolled in

the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor. I had what I thought

was a brilliant idea, a short cut to success, an idea so simple, so foolproof, that I

couldn't understand why thousands of ambitious people hadn't already discovered it. It

was this: I would study how the famous actors of that day-John Drew, Walter Hampden,

and Otis Skinner-got their effects. Then I would imitate the best point of each one of

them and make myself into a shining, triumphant combination of all of them. How silly I

How absurd! I had to waste years of my life imitating other people before it penetrated

through my thick Missouri skull that I had to be myself, and that I couldn't possibly be

anyone else.

That distressing experience ought to have taught me a lasting lesson. But it didn't. Not

me. I was too dumb. I had to learn it all over again. Several years later, I set out to

write what I hoped would be the best book on public speaking for business men that had

ever been written. I had the same foolish idea about writing this book that I had

formerly had about acting: I was going to borrow the ideas of a lot of other writers and

put them all in one book-a book that would have everything. So I got scores of books on

public speaking and spent a year incorporating their ideas into my manuscript. But it

finally dawned on me once again that I was playing the fool. This hodgepodge of other

men's ideas that I had written was so synthetic, so dull, that no business man would ever

plod through it. So I tossed a year's work into the wastebasket, and started all over

again.

This time I said to myself: " You've got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and

limitations. You can't possibly be anybody else. " So I quit trying to be a combination of

other men, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I

wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences, observations, and

convictions as a speaker and a teacher of speaking. I learned-for all time, I hope-the

lesson that Sir Walter Raleigh learned. (I am not talking about the Sir Walter who threw

his coat in the mud for the Queen to step on. I am talking about the Sir Walter Raleigh

who was professor of English literature at Oxford back in 1904. ) " I can't write a book

commensurate with Shakespeare, " he said, " but I can write a book by me. "

Be yourself. Act on the sage advice that Irving Berlin gave the late George Gershwin.

When Berlin and Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous but Gershwin was a struggling

young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin,

impressed by Gershwin's ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at

almost three times the salary he was then getting. " But don't take the job, " Berlin

advised. " If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being

yourself, some day you'll become a first-rate Gershwin. "

Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the

significant American composer of his generation.

Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Mary Margaret McBride, Gene Autry, and millions of others

had to learn the lesson I am trying to hammer home in this chapter. They had to learn

the hard way-just as I did.

When Charlie Chaplin first started making films, the director of the pictures insisted on

Chaplin's imitating a popular German comedian of that day. Charlie Chaplin got nowhere

until he acted himself. Bob Hope had a similar experience: spent years in a singing-and-

dancing act-and got nowhere until he began to wisecrack and be himself. Will Rogers

twirled a rope in vaudeville for years without saying a word. He got nowhere until he

discovered his unique gift for humour and began to talk as he twirled his rope.

When Mary Margaret McBride first went on the air, she tried to be an Irish comedian and

failed. When she tried to be just what she was-a plain country girl from Missouri-she

became one of the most popular radio stars in New York.

When Gene Autry tried to get rid of his Texas accent and dressed like city boys and

claimed he was from New York, people merely laughed behind his back. But when he

started twanging his banjo and singing cowboy ballads, Gene Autry started out on a

career that made him the world's most popular cowboy both in pictures and on the

radio.

You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave

you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You

can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment,

and your heredity have made you.

For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for

worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

As Emerson said in his essay on " Self-Reliance" : " There is a time in every man's

education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is

suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the

wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through

his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which

resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do,

nor does he know until he has tried. "

That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Malloch-

said it:

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.

Be a scrub in the valley-but be

The best little scrub by the side of the rill;

Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.

If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.

If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass-

But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.

There's something for all of us here.

There's big work to do and there's lesser to do

And the task we must do is the near.

If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,

If you can't be the sun, be a star;

It isn't by the size that you win or you fail-

Be the best of whatever you are!

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry, here is

Rule 5:

Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 17: If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade

While writing this book, I dropped in one day at the University of Chicago and asked the

Chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, how he kept from worrying. He replied: " I have

always tried to follow a bit of advice given me by the late Julius Rosenwald, President

of Sears, Roebuck and Company: 'When you have a lemon, make lemonade. ' "

That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds

that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: " I'm beaten. It is fate. I haven't

got a chance. " Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-

pity. But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: " What lesson can I learn from

this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a

lemonade? "

After spending a lifetime studying people and their hidden reserves of power, the great

psychologist, Alfred Adler, declared that one of the wonder-filled characteristics of

human beings is " their power to turn a minus into a plus. "

Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman I know who did just that. Her

name is Thelma Thompson, and she lives at 100 Morningside Drive, New York City.

" During the war, " she said, as she told me of her experience, " during the war, my

husband was stationed at an Army training camp near the Mojave Desert, in New

Mexico. 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 but Mexicans and Indians, and

they couldn't speak English. 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 be in 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 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 there millions of years ago when

" What brought about this astonishing change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn't changed.

The Indians hadn't changed. But I had. I had changed my attitude of mind. And by doing

so, 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 the stars. "

Thelma Thompson, you discovered an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred

years before Christ was born: " The best things are the most difficult. "

Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the twentieth century: " Happiness is not

mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory. " Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of

achievement, of triumph, of turning our lemons into lemonades.

I once visited a happy farmer down in Florida who turned even a poison lemon into

lemonade. When he first got this farm, he was discouraged. The land was so wretched

he could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs. Nothing thrived there but scrub oaks and

rattlesnakes. Then he got his idea. He would turn his liability into an asset: he would

make the most of these rattlesnakes. To everyone's amazement, he started canning

rattlesnake meat. When I stopped to visit him a few years ago, I found that tourists

were pouring in to see his rattlesnake farm at the rate of twenty thousand a year. His

business was thriving. I saw poison from the fangs of his rattlers being shipped to

laboratories to make anti-venom toxin; I saw rattlesnake skins being sold at fancy prices

to make women's shoes and handbags. I saw canned rattlesnake meat being shipped to

customers all over the world. I bought a picture postcard of the place and mailed it at

the local post office of the village, which had been re-christened " Rattlesnake, Florida",

in honour of a man who had turned a poison lemon into a sweet lemonade.

As I have travelled up and down and back and forth across America time after time, it

has been my privilege to meet dozens of men and women who have demonstrated " their

power to turn a minus into a plus".

The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: " The most

important thing in life is not to capitalise 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. "

Bolitho uttered those words after he had lost a leg in a railway accident. But I know a

man who lost both legs and turned his minus into a plus. His name is Ben Fortson. I met

him in a hotel elevator in Atlanta, Georgia. As I stepped into the elevator, I noticed this

cheerful-looking man, who had both legs missing, sitting in a wheel-chair in a corner of

the elevator. When the elevator stopped at his floor, he asked me pleasantly if I would

step to one corner, so he could manage his chair better. " So sorry, " he said, " to

inconvenience you" -and a deep, heart-warming smile lighted his face as he said it.

When I left the elevator and went to my room, I could think of nothing but this cheerful

cripple. So I hunted him up and asked him to tell me his story.

" It happened in 1929, " he told me with a smile. " I had gone out to cut a load of hickory

poles to stake the beans in my garden. I had loaded the poles on my Ford and started

back home. Suddenly one pole slipped under the car and jammed the steering apparatus

at the very moment I was making a sharp turn. The car shot over an embankment and

hurled me against a tree. My spine was hurt. My legs were paralysed.

" I was twenty-four when that happened, and I have never taken a step since. "

Twenty-four years old, and sentenced to a wheel-chair for the rest of his life! I asked

him how he managed to take it so courageously, and he said: " I didn't. " He said he raged

and rebelled. He fumed about his fate. But as the years dragged on, he found that his

rebellion wasn't getting him anything except bitterness. " I finally realised, " he said,

" that other people were kind and courteous to me. So the least I could do was to be kind

and courteous to them. "

I asked if he still felt, after all these years, that his accident had been a terrible

misfortune, and he promptly said: " No. " He said: " I'm almost glad now that it happened. "

He told me that after he got over the shock and resentment, he began to live in a

different world. He began to read and developed a love for good literature. In fourteen

years, he said, he had read at least fourteen hundred books; and those books had

opened up new horizons for him and made his life richer than he ever thought possible.

He began to listen to good music; and he is now thrilled by great symphonies that would

have bored him before. But the biggest change was that he had time to think. " For the

first time in my life, " he said, " I was able to look at the world and get a real sense of

values. I began to realise that most of the things I had been striving for before weren't

worth-while at all. "

As a result of his reading, he became interested in politics, studied public questions,

made speeches from his wheel-chair! He got to know people and people got to know

him. Today Ben Fortson-still in his wheel-chair-is Secretary of State for the State of

Georgia!

During the last thirty-five years, I have been conducting adult-education classes in New

York City, and I have discovered that one of the major regrets of many adults is that

they never went to college. They seem to think that not having a college education is a

great handicap. I know that this isn't necessarily true because I have known thousands of

successful men who never went beyond high school. So I often tell these students the

story of a man I knew who had never finished even grade school. He was brought up in

blighting poverty. When his father died, his father's friends had to chip in to pay for the

coffin in which he was buried. After his father's death, his mother worked in an

umbrella factory ten hours a day and then brought piecework home and worked until

eleven o'clock at night.

The boy brought up in these circumstances went in for amateur dramatics put on by a

club in his church. He got such a thrill out of acting that he decided to take up public

speaking. This led him into politics. By the time he reached thirty, he was elected to

the New York State legislature. But he was woefully unprepared for such a

responsibility. In fact, he told me that frankly he didn't know what it was all about. He

studied the long, complicated bills that he was supposed to vote on-but, as far as he

was concerned, those bills might as well have been written in the language of the

Choctaw Indians. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the

committee on forests before he had ever set foot in a forest. He was worried and

bewildered when he was made a member of the State Banking Commission before he

had ever had a bank account. He himself told me that he was so discouraged that he

would have resigned from the legislature if he hadn't been ashamed to admit defeat to

his mother. In despair, he decided to study sixteen hours a day and turn his lemon of

ignorance into a lemonade of knowledge. By doing that, he transformed himself from a

local politician into a national figure and made himself so outstanding that The New

York Times called him " the best-loved citizen of New York".

I am talking about Al Smith.

Ten years after Al Smith set out on his programme of political self-education, he was

the greatest living authority on the government of New York State. He was elected

Governor of New York for four terms-a record never attained by any other man. In 1928,

he was the Democratic candidate for President. Six great universities-including

Columbia and Harvard-conferred honorary degrees upon this man who had never gone

beyond grade school.

Al Smith himself told me that none of these things would ever have come to pass if he

hadn't worked hard sixteen hours a day to turn his minus into a plus.

Nietzsche's formula for the superior man was " not only to bear up under necessity but to

love it".

The more I have studied the careers of men of achievement the more deeply I have

been convinced that a surprisingly large number of them succeeded because they

started out with handicaps that spurred them on to great endeavour and great rewards.

As William James said: " Our infirmities help us unexpectedly. "

Yes, it is highly probable that Milton wrote better poetry because he was blind and that

Beethoven composed better music because he was deaf.

Helen Keller's brilliant career was inspired and made possible because of her blindness

and deafness.

If Tchaikovsky had not been frustrated-and driven almost to suicide by his tragic

marriage-if his own life had not been pathetic, he probably would never have been able

to compose his immortal " Symphonic Pathetique".

If Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not led tortured lives, they would probably never have

been able to write their immortal novels.

" If I had not been so great an invalid, " wrote the man who changed the scientific

concept of life on earth-" if I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so

much work as I have accomplished. " That was Charles Darwin's confession that his

infirmities had helped him unexpectedly.

The same day that Darwin was born in England another baby was born in a log cabin in

the forests of Kentucky. He, too, was helped by his infirmities. His name was Lincoln-

Abraham Lincoln. If he had been reared in an aristocratic family and had had a law

degree from Harvard and a happy married life, he would probably never have found in

the depths of his heart the haunting words that he immortalised at Gettysburg, nor the

sacred poem that he spoke at his second inauguration-the most beautiful and noble

phrases ever uttered by a ruler of men: " With malice toward none; with charity for all

... "

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 a 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. "

Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope of our ever being able to

turn our lemons into lemonade-then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anyway-

two reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Reason one: We may succeed.

Reason two: Even if we don't succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus

will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with

positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and spur us to get so busy that we

won't have either the time or the inclination to mourn over what is past and for ever

gone.

Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A

string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three

strings. " That is life, " says Harry Emerson Fosdick, " to have your A string snap and finish

on three strings. "

That is not only life. It is more than life. It is life triumphant!

If I had the power to do so, I would have these words of William Bolitho carved in

eternal bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land: