The thinking human being realizes upon achieving consciousness at 20 years of age or so that life is difficult, it’s hard, it’s not easy, and seemingly, it’s not getting any easier as I age.
So what is one of the major components that I need to live a successful life? Well, of course, many people will say hope. I need hope.
And you think to yourself at the very waning days of World War II, just before Auschwitz was liberated in January, there got to be a rumor that the camp was going to be liberated at the end of 1944.
And so all these tens of thousands of people had been hanging on in these horrid conditions, daily beatings and shootings, starvation, pestilence. It just went on. Horrible place.
I’ve been there a number of times, and it defies imagination how man can be this cruel to man, truly. You should see it one time in your lifetime if you possibly can’t. Shocking is an understatement.
So these tens of thousands of people begin to accept the rumor that they’re going to be free at the end of 1944. They can hear the guns in the distance, and then 1944 closes, 1945 begins. No Russian liberators.
So the rumor is obviously false. And between that day and when they are liberated, some three weeks later, tens of thousands of people die. Tens of thousands.
Why? Because they lost hope. So hope is very important to get through my life, obviously.
But what’s the glue, if you will? What’s the inner glue that drives hope? That has to be resilience, strength.
Because yes, it’s nice to have hope, but if you find yourself slowly but surely being browbeaten down, you have one failure and then you have two failures, three failures, and it just goes on, right?
Someone perhaps like Colonel Saunders failures all of his life until he was in his mid-sixties, when he finally discovered the right recipe for his finger-licking good chicken at KFC, of course, second largest fast food chain in the world today.
And I think he died around 80. He was a billionaire when he retired, when he died rather. So, what was his major component of his life?
Resilience. Yes, he had hope, for sure. But resilience allowed him to go from one failure to another and still keep walking.
Because this is really hard to do, isn’t it? When you fail at something two and three, four times, you want to give up. You just do.
You absolutely do. And you don’t because you believe that there’s something going on in your life. If you have this idea that something’s going to occur.
So I’m not going to give up. I’m going to push on or I’m going to die trying. Figuratively, of course, because I believe that I’m on to something, something here.
And I guess the people that do break along the way, and we see them perhaps at the train stations or in Vancouver. They’re along the streets in East Hastings. You know, thousands of people in Vancouver’s case, tens of thousands.
Mind-boggling, really, when you think of it that all of these people, maybe at some point they had hope, but they didn’t have resilience to allow them to push on.
So why do I need resilience? Why? Well, I guess in a sense, resilience protects me, doesn’t it?
It protects the inner me. And I think sometimes we forget that I am a special part of existence. I am important.
I’m one of eight billion people or more now that must contribute to the betterment of mankind.
And if I give up, and if I become a loser or a bum or a drug addict or an alcoholic or whatever it is, then I am a blight upon society, because I can also be a loser with a job for 40 or 50 years, right? Barely getting through it, right?
Then retire and die. What good is my life if this is the case, right? Resilience enables long-term projects, doesn’t it?
And the long-term project is called me. I am the long-term project, aren’t I? I think there is an element.
I know a lot of people now go to the psychologist. They are important people to go and visit, have a nice chat. And the psychiatrist, yes, if you really have mental issues, these are important people.
But I think for the most part, most of us don’t need those people. We really don’t. We need to be able to talk with the self.
Truly, so I must develop my own sense of worthiness, my own sense of, I guess you could say, emotional stability, if you will. I can never shrink from my duty of me. I’ve got a mission to accomplish, don’t I?
I must be intellectually honest with me. How many times in life do we just want to run away and hide? Just run away, but we can’t.
Well, of course, we can, we can, and many do, but you don’t want to, do you? Because you want to accomplish something in your life that’s obviously bigger than money. You could call it legacy.
I don’t really like the term, because it sounds like an egocentric life in that sense. But you want to lay down a pattern that other people can emulate later in existence, perhaps. That is true, for sure.
And I think that resilience also allows a person to transform. Really, doesn’t it? This is the hero’s journey of Joseph Campbell to a very large extent.
You don’t want to start your mission, but you feel like you must. And then you stumble along and you almost fail, and then it’s almost like divine intervention. You’re able to continue on, and then you almost fail again.
But your resilience, your inner strength, pushes you out. And finally, you succeed, you enter into the magic cave, or whatever it is, you learn your lesson, and then you return home.
So in that sense, there is something precious about resilience, because perhaps in a way, it allows you to access the divine. Whatever that means to you, somehow you’re able to have a conversation with God, Gaia, or the universe, right?
Soren Kierkegaard, he always taught us that we need this ultimate leap of faith. We must somehow make that leap of faith. When it doesn’t seem rational, I’m going to make that leap of faith, and I interpret that to mean a leap of faith in me.
Because if you really stand back and have a good look at you, you’re not much, are you? Really, you’re just a body, you know, and you need an education, and then you need some chances, you need some luck.
Well, many people say I make my own luck to a large extent. The person I always think of when I really feel down in the dump, so to speak, is Helen Keller.
Because Helen Keller was born as a normal person, and then she got a disease which made her deaf and blind. So she only had the major sense of being able to speak, but deaf and blind. And she was totally lost, until she was around seven years old.
And then her parents actually hired a lady by the name of Ann Sullivan, and this lady, Ann Sullivan, became her teacher, her friend, her guide, her servant, in a way, went with her, accompanied her to school.
And because Helen Keller had such resilience to overcome these handicaps, she slowly but surely got powerful.
And this is the poem that Helen Keller referenced in her speech. And I’ll read it to you. The Psalm of Life by Henry Wasworth Longfellow.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal.
Dost thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul? Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way.
But to act, that each tomorrow Find us farther than today, Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still like muffled drums are beating, Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of life, Be not like dumb driven cattle, Be a hero in the strife.
Trust no future, however pleasant, Let the dead past bury its dead, Act, act, in the living present, Heart within, and God overhead.
Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us, Footprints, on the sands of time, Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s sullen main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing shall take
heart again, Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait. That’s the end of the poem. But obviously, this is why we need resilience.
So, she radically believed in life, because obviously she could see the struggles that her life had taken, just to be able to come to the point that she was able to think in that sense and speak. So, think to yourself about hope.
Of course, hope is extremely important. We all need hope if we’re going to be successful in life. But think that I need to find a way to strengthen my resilience.
Maybe I have to go and strengthen my body. Last summer, I walked the Camino in Spain, the Northern route. David and I walked for 900 kilometers, a little bit over 40-something days.
And that proved to me at almost 70 years old that my body was still resilient. And before the walk, I was concerned that just maybe the body will let me down, right? But I proved to myself that the body continues to be resilient.
And I deal with a lot of students on an ongoing basis, and they ask me a lot of questions that I have to respond to intelligently. Shows that the mind continues to be resilient.
Whether you’re 16 or 60, you can prove to yourself on an ongoing basis that I am a resilient being. One young woman said to me the other day, thank you, Leon, because of your encouragement, I feel more resilient.
With my studies, they’re under a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed, of course. I feel more resilient. And I’m going to try harder.
I don’t feel so sad. So think to yourself, what’s going to make me resilient? I’m going to get my notebook out.
I’m going to be grateful every single day for my life. I’m going to write in my notebook. I’m going to say my prayers to God, Gaia, or the universe, something bigger than me.
And I’m going to be a success in my life, whatever that means to me. And you know what they say. You know what they say.
To be successful in life, I must be a hopeful person. I must have a mission in my life, but most assuredly, I must be resilient. I must be resilient.
And critical thinking is great. It’s great. So, you take care.
God bless. Bye-bye.