I am going to tell you something completely non-intuitive(unexpecting), this is a real-life story of an american doctor who was shipped to Germany during world war 2, lets say his name was was Dr.Beacher,Henry Knowles Beacher if i heard it right on the radio(RADIOLAB to be exact). Now, Dr.Beacher was no ordinary clinic doctor, he used to treat patients in critical condition, something that involved bullet wounds or fire burns for example. So, Dr.Beacher already had about 1000 hrs of practice and experience about.......you guessed it PAIN. Every patient he treated at Boston was deeply in pain. So, forward 5 years later, he is on the war front treating soldiers dying of bullet wounds and he is running short of morphine(the pain killer). Now, Beacher as i said had enough experience of things like this, so he stayed calm and did something interesting, something that would start a whole new branch of medical science. Beacher started to ask the soldiers if they needed morphine.There, now what would you guess would be the answer? Almost 75%of the soldiers said 'NO, i dont need the morphine doctor, i think i can survive the pain'. Amazing!
You see, this would be completely different for some common man who'd been shot in Boston, they just cried out for morphine the moment they got into the ambulance. Where is the difference between these two individuals?The difference is that as the soldier gets shot, he does not fear that his life would go in vain, in essence he feels that getting shot would actually bring him some luxuries like being shipped back home, getting some nurses to treat him or even the odd parade to attend to. The civilian on the other hand feels the moment he gets shot that he would lose everything he had,which included HIS LIFE!!, his family getting sad and something worse and worse. He thinks 'Nothing good is going to come of this'. The conclusion though is that the story one tells in that one fraction of a second is what defines how you behave and hence your future.
The thing that surprised us most about the questions made for the quiz period was that every question mostly had the same answer.
For ex,'who won the Australian open in 1997?'-martina hingis
'who won the us open in 1997'-hingis, '....wimbledon?'-hingis.
Our probable guess for such monotonic framing was that the teacher plucked everything from a single article in the newspaper, which was how things were done back then.
And of-course, the human mind dulls to such unconsiderable levels that the moment we notice something different, we focus all our attention on it Vis a vis a girl walking outside class, or that most arcane of moments- a quiz question with a different answer!
This one was as follows:
'which sportsperson retired in 1996 on account of cancer?'-Lance Armstrong
'Which sportsperson won the Tour De France in 1999?'-Lance Armstrong
(The teacher always used the term 'sportsperson'. She did not have the patience to look up the name of the sport).
Now, this struck me as very odd and obviously registered itself in the dark annals of my brain. I did not yet know how profound an achievement this actually was, i didn't know how life-threatening cancer could be,obviously because i was still a kid.
10 years later, i stumbled upon a book in a second-hand book shop in Cologne labelled 'It's not about the bike, My journey back to Life by LANCE ARMSTRONG'. Now,thoughts started to rain into my head , stuff like he fought cancer and won the Tour De France 7 times. I then, like any sane person analysed what this meant, 'Wait a minute! Fight cancer and win the Tour De France!!!!That too 7 TIMES!!!' I realised for the first time what an achievement this really was, but i was still skeptical.
I then read the book continuously every day for 7 days straight, on the bus, on the train, in office because i just wanted to know how anyone can survive cancer and all the chemotherapy sessions and come out unfazed albeit ride on a bicycle with 1 testicle, but win the Tour a record 7 times??Btw,Eddie Merckx was the closest with 5 under his belt and his record was considered unbeatable.
I found my answer, it goes like this-'It was his mother'. Thats the answer, simple as they get. Ever since Lance was born, it was not that he was physically different, he was shown what he was good at and in what he wasn't. And who showed all this to him? His mother. Right from Swimming, cycling, running or even clearing exams after being thrown outta school, he was shown how to get through them all. He failed at swimming, but hey!,there's more than 1 sport in the world, lets try cycling 70 miles a day with my mom driving behind me in the back all the way to make sure i was alright and eat a well cooked meal after all that! His mother was no less tenacious by any means, she did not quit her job even though she could move and get better ones, she knew that this wouldn't look good on Lance,she was the only role-model he had.(This was all in the book btw).
And so, 13 years after getting on a bike, Lance Armstrong was World Champion and won a Tour Stage for his buddy down-under. He was getting to the top until he noticed the size of his testicles and figured out testicles don't grow to unreasonable proportions in 1 night. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer. But hey,why fret when my mom says im going to get through this, then i will, its worked before, ill do it again, only this time, its juuust-a-little bit harder. He got through it and won the Tour 7 times!
But i still ask this question,What if Lance Armstrong did something he didnt like at all? Something like studying math at college? Would he still have quit? I would guess yes. You see, this is where i want to make my point, he did quit swimming because he knew he wasn't good at it! What i mean to say is, if there is no urge to find out what your'e good at, then life becomes a boring living coma with sprinkles of artificial happiness coming in the form of parties or beer or girls.I'm not saying these are a farce,I'm saying they cannot be used as a substitute for happiness. Happiness lies in what we do and what we believe. People do not realize this,yet.
