Sunday, November 4, 2001		Article

SOMEONE strikes you a blow on the face. What is your reaction? Do you lie there and take it — or do you fight?

A great deal depends on the circumstances — you may be old, or infirm, or frail. You may be smaller and less physically fit than your opponent.

Then, though instinct tells you to fight, retaliate, defend yourself, your mind weighs the odds and you restrain yourself. You later fight with the weapons like cunning, mental power or law, but in one way or another, you fight.

The pacifist tells you not to fight, but some people refuse to fight themselves but employ others to fight for them. Underhand and cunning methods are often employed by the so-called pacifist.

Fate, too, sometimes gives us a blow. Perhaps we are not made of fighting stuff. Perhaps we are temporarily stunned by the blow. But if we are men and women of spirit we get up and fight.

Necessity drives us to achieve what we might otherwise have thought impossible. Sometimes we need the prod of fate — an apparently relentless and vindictive fate to push us on to achieve something. We have many qualities, some of them latent and unrecognised.

Fate can make us dig into this treasure chest and find one or two abilities which can be used to meet and combat the misfortune or setback which has arrived, perhaps overnight, on our doorstep.

An athlete becomes robust through exercise. And so with us — gifts of mind and soul develop only through use. Too long this has been preached. Too long have some of us worked hard — to get something for nothing. Never was there so great a fallacy, for never has nature given without a price.

We have all got something with which we can pay — energy, time, strength, knowledge, skill, charm, beauty, personality.

The sick, the mentally and physically malformed have very little they can give, except that they give the rest of humanity an opportunity for service, for kindness, for sympathy. Without these people, the human race might become utterly selfish.

The time and energy many spend on trying to get something for nothing are amazing. Yet, few of us are entirely free from a fascination for gambling. By and large we have to pay for what we want directly or indirectly, and mostly by hard work.

What is sadly missing today is an enthusiasm to get somewhere, to achieve something. Many people have the potential, they have youth, health, energy, education, training — everything with which to win the race — but they lack drive and determination. They cannot even start because they do not know where they are going. They need a goal, a spark, to set them afire so that they surge forward — a spark of desire and enthusiasm, desire for achievement and enthusiasm about their work.

This is old stuff today — it is modern to believe in shorter hours, less work, more money, no responsibility or initiative, and only to be enthusiastic over leisure, pleasure, and "fun". We must revert to the old stuff — work, enthusiasm, drive, initiative.

Success comes through the drive and enthusiasm of the individual. Misfortune, depression, economic crises can shake us out of the rut and prod us to achieve something. Misfortune is opportunity in disguise.

Businesses may fail, jobs may be lost, but there is work to be done and another niche can be found, perhaps better and more satisfying.

In serving ourselves we are serving our country. It is not a bad idea to revive some old-fashioned ideas which have over the past thirty or forty years been discarded with what was bad.