The Full Corn in the Ear

 

The Full Corn in the Ear

Years ago, so the story goes, a Jewish philosopher was trudging along the rock-strewn terrain of the country side; laden with severe accusations about his vision, and about to be killed.

Surrounded by a mammoth crowd of cheerers and wailers, he exercised not many seconds to say a few words to both groups of onlookers. Fixing his eyes on them, he said: “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.”

The philosopher saw afar-off, the light at the end of the tunnel, the reward of the course he borne while the environment was in frenzy and tumult. He did not allow his detractors to distract him from his resolve to actualize his vision.

When your vision begins to take shape and form it will attract unsolicited cheerers and wailers, or rather sympathizers. However, of these two groups of people, the sympathizers are the most lethal to the success of your vision.

Sympathy is contagious. And often times destructive to the pursuit of a vision. It can bring down a skyscraper, not necessarily with a bulldozer, but with copious emotions.

Some days past, I had first-hand lesson from a batch of sugar ants why sympathy sometimes is not necessary.

Idling away on a sandy path in As-Sunnah Street, I couldn’t help but notice a batch of sugar ants attempting to roll away a tiny piece of rock which was obstructing the entrance to the ant-hole. The sight of this struggle piqued my interest a great deal that I stooped and condescend to see how this batch of ants would roll away that rock.

Observing with keen interest for a length of time, actually, ten minutes, the corporate effort of those ants seems not to be making any head way. Every move to roll away that piece of rock, the rock would retrace it path into the ant-hole.

At a point I began to sympathize with the gruelling labour of those ants. So I reached out my gigantic hand toward the rock in order to remove it from the ant-hole. As I reach for the rock, suddenly it dawned on me that introducing my hand, in sympathy to help, might incur severe consequences on the activity of those ants. Firstly, I might succeed in removing the tiny piece of rock to my credit and not the ants’. Secondly, in my attempt to remove the rock, I might mistakenly push the tiny piece of rock deep into the ant-hole which is tantamount to more harm than good. And thirdly, those ants might see my hand as an invasion of the day’s labour; it will scare them and they’ll run for safety leaving the work undone and rendering my effort futile.

Informed by those three consequences, I decided to leave those ants to fate. But to my amazement, it wasn’t up to two minutes since I regained composure that those ants rolled away the relatively gigantic piece of rock from the ant-hole and had since carried supplies into it.  

  What am I getting to? This lesson has to be re-learned frequently by every visionary, particularly at the full corn in the ear phase, that at this phase the influence of both the cheerers and sympathizers could either make or mar a good vision. But you can choose whether or not their influence will be beneficial or detrimental to your vision. Nevertheless, these two extremes of vision-influencers have to be well managed, that is, there should be a delicate point of balance in order not to misconstrue genuine motives.

On the one hand, when a visionary gravitates totally toward the cheerers, his vision and idea might be boxed and stifled. This extreme of influencers would make the visionary think he has arrived the very crest of his vision when there are other frontiers to explore; new room to create and more capacity to build. While, the visionary, gravitating toward the sympathizer’s extreme would render his vision futile and keep it in a sorry state of mediocre. In other words, the vision will be suppressed by copious emotions and farces; and never rise above earth crust. More so, the sympathizers, by offering negative defeating analysis of the tenability of the vision, evoke fear into the mind of the visionary rendering his vision morbid.

For example, Florence Nightingale had the cheerers and the sympathizers as her lot to contend with when she decided to pursue her vision. History chronicles the fact that Florence was born to a family of affluence and social prominence in London, England. Florence vision and philosophy was encapsulated in fourteen words. Those fourteen words saw her become ostracized, rejected, criticized and considered insane both by her family and society.

But she considered the ill treatments and sentiments doled out to her as a temporary inconvenience: a passing phase that will bring about methodical change on the modus operandi of hospitals.

In her biography, her mother, in a letter, was quoted as saying, “We are two ducks my husband and I, and we’ve given birth to a wild swan.” Florence was labelled a “Victim of a nervous breakdown,” and “Possessed of demons.”

In spite of the backlashes from family and society; when the Crimean War broke out, Florence chose to go in order to be of service to the soldiers.

Here are the fourteen words that changed her life and disturbed fixed patterns: “I will help people by relieving them of pain. I’ll become a nurse.” For three years Florence worked as a nurse to the injured and dying soldiers. She dressed their wounds, cleaned their blood and amputated legs. And after the War is ended, she published articles on how hospitals should be operated.

Florence became a pioneer nurse, a professional and an authority in the field of nursing. She was afterwards awarded a royal jewel by Her Majesty Queen Victoria for her service to the soldiers.

Florence did not allow the influence of the cheerers and sympathizers to obscure her vision. She was resolute to see her vision realized.

Have you got a vision? Are you resolute to see the materialization of your vision? It is up to you whether or not your vision succeeds or fails. This is the greatest advice I’ve ever heard as touching the realization of a tenable, sound and feasible vision: “Having done all to stand, stand!”

Shakespeare was being metaphorical, in hamlet, when he had Polonius say: “And this above all, to thine own self be true-and it must follow as the night the day-thou can’st not then be false, to any man.”

The last statement takes on profound significance when it is identified with the inscription on the entrance to the temple at Delphi gnothi seauton “Know thyself.”

It is expedient that every visionary know his strengths, values and method; and stick to it irrespective of circumstances and conditions in order to be able to filter the noise from the brood of cheerers and sympathizers, realizing that those broods streamline their own opinion to conform to their own manner of thinking and interests, but the visionary, however, is a majority of one when the chips are down.

That was exactly what Florence Nightingale did. She discovered her strengths, values and method then explored and pursued it earnestly. She refused to yield to the buck and sentiments of family and society the cheerers and sympathizers. She’d filtered the noise.

Really, sentiments from cheerers and sympathizer sometimes produce stress and fatigue that could be detrimental to a vision. In his book, “The Energies of Men,” Dr. William James wrote the following lines: “On usual occasion we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first layer... of fatigue, have then walked, played or worked “enough,” so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy...” I couldn’t agree more. Really, you needn’t have a bee in your bonnet about cheerers and sympathizers and their attendant influences. Rather, discover your strengths, values and method. Keep your head out of the cloud and your priority straight then press onward and act through with confidence.

In the main, ask yourself the following questions: what are my strengths, method and values. Expressed somewhat differently, what am I good at? How do I perform? And what would I stand and be known for even in the midst of contradicting evidence, and yet wouldn’t compromise?  

 

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