Despite the Odds

When I arrived at the hospital, I hadn’t slept more than 2 hours a night in 3 days. It was the day after my 27th birthday and I had celebrated it in the not entirely typical fashion, in varying states of exhaustion and utter bleakness on the third of four flights to get to the other side of the world after quitting a job I loved and packing everything I owned into 3 simultaneously too small and yet unwieldy suitcases. It was one of the worst days of my albeit quite short life. 

It is time to admit. Bad things happen. 

No one prepares you for the worst day. There isn’t a field guide or an introductory course to tragedy, unforeseen obstacles and suffering. As much as you can attempt to wrap your life in bubble wrap, the sharp edges will still puncture through 

Should we still strive to build a safe world for ourselves and those around us? Absolutely. But we are only human, and no single person can control our exposure to hardship. Even fictional heroes have bad days. And the best laid plans go awry.

But would we be interested in the story of Black Panther on a pleasant day out in Wakanda? The Martian, but Matt Damon is just a normal Earth potato farmer? Rocky, but no training montages, just natural Herculean strength? Not Actually Hidden Figures?

Movies may gloss over the struggle. Place it into a cleanly cut montage, showing constant and obvious improvement towards goal and recovery- but that struggle is still a fundamental feature to the hero's success. 

So there I stood in the ICU, certain of my own bedraggled appearance. Even the sight of my father, surrounded by numerous machines beeping and sputtering to maintain his health, was a salve on my soul. I hugged him, and he insisted on removing his oxygen mask to tell me he loved me and to wish me a happy birthday. His voice filled me with sunshine, with the sleep I hadn’t had properly for weeks. Unfortunately, it was the last thing he ever said aloud, as he had strained his lungs and had to be rushed back into surgery and intubated. 

When things inevitably go wrong, you feel stuck. In a grueling and endless pocket of time. An all-encompassing black, unable to see forward. You’ve always felt like this. The suffering becomes who you are. The image of the dying man, not the loving father that taught you how to change a tire, is all you can remember.

But this is not the end. 

Nor is it a regrettable pit stop. 

Once you are able to drag yourself out of the chasm that you have been pulled into, you will find yourself in charge of your own narrative. And once you find yourself with that control again, what will you do? 

You should be excited, because once again- anything is possible.

Konosuke Matsushita, born at the tail end of the 19th century, was an inventive and business oriented man. Having created a new and improved socket design for his current employers the ‘Osaka Electric Light Company’, he was immediately told that his ideas were futile and useless. Combined with that and his consistent health struggles, he decided to take a bet on his own ingenuity anyways, quit his job and produced the socket and other electronic inventions himself. For over 6 months he and his family lived on nothing. They pawned any valuables remaining in their house in order to keep the small family fed. Until one day, miraculously, a large manufacturer placed a large order for one of his revolutionary inventions. 

Although his at the time tiny company grew from its then shoestring budget to the powerhouse, Panasonic that we all know today.

Hardship is still hardship. No one would deny the difficulty of what is before you, and what is past. But if you can grow beyond your struggles, you will find yourself hardened in spirit, and with a new and abiding faith in the goals that you had set forth in the first place. 

Malala Yousafzai advocated for the right to free and fair education for girls in her home country of Pakistan from when she was still a child in 2009. And when she experienced a terrorist attack and critical gunshot wound due to her online advocacy, did she allow that to become the end of the story? Of course not. Because we all know her today for her Nobel Prize, having helped the Pakistan’s Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill pass through the National Assembly. 

Is sacrifice and turmoil a recipe for success? Of course not. It can be completely overwhelming, absolutely devastating. Being torn down does not mean that you will always be able to build back up.

But it can also be an excuse not to give in but to dig your heels in, rebuild, find a new perspective, and newer and more innovative methods of attack.

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is an unusual novel, part philosophy, part self-help, part travel story, part circuitous meandering narrative. Its author, Robert Pirsig, was no stranger to difficulty. A brilliant man, began his university career at only 15, but flunked out 2 years later, served in the Korean war, then returned to complete his bachelor degree in Philosophy years later. While working on his Doctorate, he suffered a psychiatric break and was institutionalized, undergoing shock therapy (as well as just about every other extreme therapeutic method) for his condition. This is where he received the news that his wife had divorced him. Under these conditions, he worked on his now classic novel, which received a startling 121 rejections while being written. 

The mildly fictionalized story of a road trip with his son and his journey with mental illness, his novel has now sold more than 5 million copies and is available in more than 20 languages. One man’s struggle for truth and meaning in the world has now brought his enlightenment to all of those people. 

Despite overwhelming odds. 

But people say that a lot don’t they? Despite the odds. But if the odds in the end don’t break you, aren’t too much, they can add to your story. You can accept your circumstances, and build from a new and stronger place, having learned your strengths, embraced the chaos of the world and tested your mettle. 

My father’s funeral was a blur of love and tears. The tears possibly contributed to the blur. My fantastic sister, brother-in-law and I, none of whom lived in the city that Dad had found himself in, packed, donated and sold everything that he had accumulated throughout his entire life within a week and a half haze. With my three suitcases and a few boxes of my late father's belongings, I loaded his Prius, hugged my sister and braced myself for a 16 hour drive to another city on the shortest day of the year. No job, no prospects, one previously long-distance partner, no existing friendships and the contents of this car was all that I would have in my soon-to-be home. My eyes focused on the endless repetitive road, I swallowed cold gas station coffee, I survived.

No one asks if you’re ready to start over. 

No one asks if you’re ready at all.

When you find yourself facing something that really tests you, right up to the point of breaking, it's important not to see your adversity as a speed bump, or a rest stop on your path but as a moment of your otherwise triumphant story to be eventually edited out. It’s time to see your trials as the thing that makes you into who you are. Your business into what it will eventually become. See the cracks in your foundation and rebuild stronger. 

It's time to focus on the road forward. You’ll survive. And maybe because of that, you will thrive.

Cynthia Doucette