ON MAKING A DIFFERENCE (II)

 Our first story is titled ‘Give and You Get’. It was about this American farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning corn [American for ‘maize’]. Each year he would enter his corn in the state agric fair, and each year it would win him honours and prizes. One year, a newspaper reporter interviewed him to […]

 Our first story is titled ‘Give and You Get’. It was about this American farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning corn [American for ‘maize’]. Each year he would enter his corn in the state agric fair, and each year it would win him honours and prizes. One year, a newspaper reporter interviewed him to learn something about how he grew his high quality corn. The reporter made an interesting discovery: the farmer shared his best seed corn with his neighbours at planting season!

‘But how can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours, when they are also entering their corn in competition with yours each year?’ the reporter had asked.

 ’Why sir’, replied the farmer, ‘don’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn.’

 The farmer has given a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbours’ corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions! Those who choose to be at harmony must help their neighbours and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well. The value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. Success does not happen in isolation.

Then this one titled ‘From Many, Even One’ about a man who was walking along the beach at dawn when he noticed a young man ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them back into the sea. Finally catching up with the youth, the man asked him why he was doing this. The young man replied that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun. ‘But the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of stranded starfish,’ said the other man. ‘How can your efforts make any difference?’ The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. ‘It makes a difference to that one,’ he said.

 Then this soliloquy on ‘Changing the World’. “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realise the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realise that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation, and I could indeed have changed the world.” The message here is: ‘Don’t attempt to start from the top, or from the most difficult. Start with the little bits, and the big chunks will fall in place.’

 Or, in other words, ‘Build a Better World:’

“Build a better world,” said God

And I asked: “How?

The world is such a vast place and so complicated now

I am small and useless

What can I do?”

God in all His wisdom said, “Just build a better you.”

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, once told a university audience this story about his own father: “When I was sixteen years old, we lived about eighteen miles outside the city of Durban in South Africa. One Saturday my father had to go to town to attend a conference and he didn’t feel like driving, so he asked me to drive him into town. I was also given other chores to do in town, like getting the car serviced and the oil changed. When I left my father at the conference venue, he said, ‘At five o’clock in the evening, come here and pick me up.’

 “I said, ‘Fine,’ and rushed off, did all my chores as quickly as possible, left the car in the garage, and went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in the movie that I didn’t realise the passage of time. The movie ended at 5:30pm and I came out and ran to the garage and rushed to where Dad was waiting for me. It was almost six o’clock when I reached there, and he was wondering what had happened to me. The first question he asked me was, ‘Why are you late?’”

 “Instead of telling him the truth, I lied to him and said, ‘The car wasn’t ready; I had to wait for them to finish,’ not realising that he had already called the garage. When he caught me in the lie, he said, ‘There must be something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn’t give you the confidence to tell me the truth; that made you feel you had to lie to me. I’ve got to find out where I went wrong with you, and to do that I’m going to walk home.’”

“There was absolutely nothing I could do to make him change his mind – and I couldn’t leave him and go away. For five and a half hours, I crawled along in the car behind Father, watching him go through all this pain and agony for a stupid lie. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again. It’s almost fifty years since the event, and every time I think about it I still get goose bumps. Anything that is brought by fear doesn’t last. But anything that is done by love lasts forever.”

 Mother Teresa of Calcutta is said to have hung a copy of this poem titled ANYWAY on a wall of the orphanage she founded in Calcutta, India. Though the poem’s source is unknown, it is all about making a difference:

People are often unreasonable,

illogical and self-centred;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,

People may accuse you

of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,

you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

 If you are frank,

people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,

someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,

they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,

people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,

and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,

it is between you and God;

It is never between you and them anyway.

And then finally, the greatest of all Allah’s creations, Muhammad the Prophet of Islam (upon whom be peace), gave us the optimum advise in making a difference and seizing the moment. He said, in a Hadith quoted in al-Munawi’s Fayd al-Qadir (III:30), that “If you have a sapling, and you have the time, be certain to plant it even if Doomsday starts to break forth.”

 That is, should you have some seed or seedling in your hand, and it is the Last Day and the Horn has been sounded to herald it, don’t just give up and throw away the seed; no, the Prophet said, seize the moment, plant it, make a difference!