Two mice in a jar of milk

The columnist shares with us his personal version of a profound lesson in perseverance. Parental and in yoseph's case, paternal advice acquires ever greater meaning as sons and daughters themselves take their own strides in time...

I can bet some money that almost all of us have gone through some challenges in life, be it financial, relationship wise, in our work place, emotionally, and in many other ways. The older I get the more challenges I face, and there seems to be a huge variation in the degree of challenges I face. I believe that most of you have encountered some obstacles that seem too difficult to overcome. Sometimes, these challenges become so big that we tend to give up on them, and other times, we work really hard at avoiding such situations or overcoming them. We go through breakdowns and most times we endure it, hoping for it to pass, or look for a solution elsewhere, and other times it becomes very easy to just give up, to welcome to breakdown and live with it. If any of this is not familiar to you, then I highly envy you. But to most of us, no matter our age, gender or financial status or even social class, we have had a taste of what a challenge is at different levels.
Each individual has a way of approaching challenges in life: we use our faith, encouragement from our friends and family, a therapy, and so many different means that are applicable to us. Therefore, I will not do anyone a service by pretending to know the best approach to overcoming the hardest times in life, but I will share with you the approach I have learned from those really close to me, and the approach I try to follow. A very influential person in my life who has been a great inspiration and someone I have tremendous respect for is my father. This is not just because he is my father, but his character and his perseverance in life is a story that amazes me everyday. I believe many of us have such individuals in our lives, be it our relatives of our role models, whose experience and personality we find highly inspirational. I will use a short story to share with you the kind of approach he taught me to use in difficult times. And the story goes like this.
Two mice fell into a jar of milk. One mouse drowned and died. The other one struggled, it struggled hard, so hard that it turned the milk into butter and walked out.
The first mouse fell into a bottomless pool of milk that could devour anything of its size. Stuck in that pool, survival became an empty hope, an uphill battle. The gates to desperation unlocked, sorrow and pain and anguish and misery rushed in all at once. The mouse saw its demon, but chose to avoid it. The mouse gave in, and was consumed.
On the other hand, the second mouse possessed determination and strong will that surpassed its physical ability. The mouse faced its demon and did not avoid it. It stirred the milk in earnest, enduring that torment and resisting the soul-wrenching darkness. A perpetual struggle for life turned that milk into butter, that merciless pool into soft ground, it turned the problem itself into a solution, and it walked out.
This story has taught me a huge lesson, and has opened my eyes to see life from a different perspective. Even though my father is not the one who told me the story, I saw him being the second mouse. He has been in that milk more than once, and hasn't drowned. He has lived in the extremes of life: from being very poor to helping others in need, from a hopeless and daringly careless young man to a counselor. My father turned the life that swallowed his friends and promised no future, into a life dedicated to helping people make a future out of their miseries.
My father has taught me to be the second mouse, to make fine butter out of whatever jar of milk I fall into. Rather than shy away from life's challenges and following some path of least resistance like the first mouse did, rather than looking for solutions elsewhere, stirring diligently and making a solution out of them has proven more rewarding.
This approach proves to me that sometimes, the solutions to our problems aren't elsewhere; sometimes the problem itself could yield a solution. The second mouse didn't try to jump out and escape the problem, but rather it turned the problem into walking ground, it did the impossible. Sometimes, more money might not bring the answer to our problems, winning a DV lottery might not add much substance to our lives, and there are many instances when we wonder but with vain searching for that single answer. There might just be a possibility where we could find a solution in the problem itself.

Yoseph can be reached at askyoseph@gmail.com