Beech Tree News Network

Personal Legend: With no exception, every time I’ve ever shown a baby or toddler his or her face in the mirror, the response has been the same: sheer delight.  Children are so excited by their own reflections, and not in a narcissistic way.  They like what they see.  Their self-view has not yet been tainted by those around them.  They, themselves, set the standard by which they are measured, and it will be one of the few times in their lives that they truly measure up.
Interaction with family, friends, school and work have a way of pulling the rug from beneath any delight and hopefulness you might have brought with you when you arrived.  I’m convinced that I would be unrecognizable to the one-year-old me.  Sometimes, I think I would be an embarrassment to her.  I read once that most people aren’t really afraid of death they’re just ashamed to die, ashamed because they didn’t have the courage, fortitude or self-discipline to forge ahead and reach their goals.
In Paulo Coelho’s book, The Alchemist, a shepherd boy, who dreams of traveling the world and finding hidden treasure, is approached by the prophet king, Melchizedek, who asks to see the book the boy is reading.  After examining the book, the prophet says: “It says the same thing all the other books in the world say…It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends.  And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”
What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the shepherd boy asked.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
The shepherd boy decides to embark upon the quest to find his personal legend.  He sells his sheep and sails for Africa.  The first person the boy trusts in the new land steals his money which leaves the boy alone and penniless in a strange country.  The boy examines his situation and decides that he has to “choose between thinking of himself as a poor victim of a theft or as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.”  He remembers something the old prophet told him: “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”  The boy makes his decision: “I’m an adventurer looking for treasure,” he tells himself.
I’ve thought about those words, the universe conspires in helping you achieve it, many times, and I’ve decided that the universe has a strange sense of humor.  My computer will shut down while I’m racing to meet a deadline, I’ll break a bottle, which has been set aside for a special order, while lifting it from the kiln, or my granddaughter will decide this is the day she will not take a nap, just as I’ve dusted off a manuscript I haven’t worked on in a year.
Oswald Chambers wrote that the obstacles are there for everyone; the lurking peril is the temptation to sit down and do nothing.  “It is a terrible thing to have to sit down to something,” he wrote.  Believe you me, I know what he’s talking about.  I’m not fond of struggle, but I’ve discovered it is necessary for accomplishment, and sometimes the struggle involves not struggling. 
I’ve learned a lot from watching my children’s reactions to situations.  Once, when the kids were 10 and 7, they arrived home about fifteen minutes before I did.  They entered the house through the utility room, like they always did, but the door into the house was locked.  My oldest daughter was going to get into the house one way or another, so she took a hammer from a nearby tool box and started whacking the daylights out of the door knob (the dents are still there).  My youngest daughter reasoned that there was probably another unlocked door.  She found one leading from the sun room into the house, whereupon she entered and unlocked the utility room door, barely escaping a blow from my hammer-wielding older daughter. 
In most situations, I tend to be of the hammer-wielding persuasion, but my younger daughter’s reaction in that incident has encouraged me to stop and consider the options.  Maybe there is another way to handle a situation—another process by which you can arrive at your own personal legend.  If not, then whack the daylights out of that sucker!