Relative Joy

Dr Shirard Adiviso and the Development Team of Asian Hospital recently gave me a book entitled “How High Will You Climb?” by John C. Maxwell.

I had a little time to read this 160pp book during my short travel for a speaking engagement. It’s a highly engaging read and one of the highlights of the book is on attitude.

That inward feeling expressed by behavior. It can be seen without even having to utter a word. As Maxwell put it well, “of all the things we wear, our expressions are the most important.”

The next few blogs will center on a few good points about attitude that I’m sharing with you.  One of the important axioms of attitude lies in what Maxwell points out as: Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings.

In Awake, My Heart, my friend J. Sidlow Baxter writes, “What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity?  Our attitude toward it.  Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.”

When confronted with a difficult situation, a person with an outstanding attitude makes the best of it while he gets the worse of it.  Life can be likened to a grindstone.  Whether it grinds you down or polishes you depends on what you are made of.

Few people knew Abraham Lincoln until the great weight of the Civil War showed his character.  Robinson Crusoe was written in prison.  John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in the Bedford jail.  Sir Walter Raleigh wrote The History of the World during a thirteen-year imprisonment.  Luther translated the Bible while confined in the castle of Wartburg.  Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works.

When God wants to educate a man, He does not send him to the school of graces but to the school of necessities.  Through the pit and the dungeon, Joseph came to the throne.  Moses tended sheep in the desert before God called him for service.  Peter, humbled and broken by his denial of Christ, heeded the command to “Feed My sheep”.

Great leaders emerge when crises occur.  In the lives of people who achieve, terrible troubles force them to rise above the commonplace.  Not only do they find the answers, but they discover a tremendous power within themselves.  Like a groundswell far out in the ocean, this force within explodes into a mighty wave when circumstances seem to overcome.  Then out steps the athlete, the author, the statesman, the scientist, or the businessman. David Sarnoff said, “There is plenty of security in the cemetery.  I long for opportunity.”

Today, at the crossroads of the economy and politics in the Philippines, we need to make sure that we keep our integrity and principles in serving the people.

The lost. The least. The last.

We need to make sure that our attitude is one where it is not self-serving.  Like the plane that takes off against the wind, where the turbulence is part of the climb, the noise we hear and feel are just part of the political climate.

We cannot (and should not) mix politics with personal gains.  In the end, a nation of hungry people creates masses that are discontented with governance and will pay a price dearly. At what cost is human life worth?

It’s all in the attitude.