23-01-2014
Challenge that is Opportunity
A challenge is a moment when all life collects into one single circumstance and presents itself to a single man for him to face and overcome. Truly it is a divine moment. Though divine in character, it has all the potentials to dissolve him in a thrice. Those who rise to the occasion, always rise to the top of the world, at least their own world. They are the milestones of human progress. For those who have been rising in the scale of leadership, it is a moment of historic fulfillment. It does happen to families when the family creates a new leadership of the community. Age is no bar for such a phenomenon to occur. A group of ten children rushed to a press after school hours to pick out lead from the worn out print discarded. One day the manager of the press, intrigued by the rush of the children, came out bursting and shouting. It was an innocent moment, or even a non-event. But adult authority is more than real to children of that age. The entire group of twenty children dropped the waste material collected and were on the run. One of them was oblivious of the arrival of the manager or the children who took to their heels. The manager thundered at him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He did not look up, but continued collecting the waste material. The manager lost his vigour but shouted again. The child looked up and answered innocently, ‘I am picking up thrown away print.’ The manager was silenced and retreated. It is the natural, innate courage of innocence.
In Gomati’s Lover, Rangarajan, when he sees her for the first time, saw the wonder of his own soul reflected outside. Minutes later he was rescuing her from the amorous advances of a drunk and she was thanking him. Fifteen minutes later he receives a hit on his head by her ladle in his second effort to rescue her from a fool’s stupidity. He, a son of a zamindar, employed himself as a car driver to be in her proximity. Four days later she comes to him as a bride, the daughter of another zamindar, when his own identity was revealed as both the families gathered at a third home. The long story, an intense chain of humorous life responses, saw him as the central figure who was stationed INSIDE meeting one challenge after another, many of them were humiliating and threatening to arrest him. It is a chain of psychological challenges overcome. Spiritual evolution at its lower human end is a plane of psychology. Its one response is challenge. There are those who court challenges like FDR and Churchill. Others like Gandhiji and Gorbachev create challenging national or global circumstances for themselves. In 1979 Chrysler trapped Iacocca into her leadership, where on knowing the truth of affairs he was physically crushed and mentally dissolved. Even the one million dollar salary was insufficient incentive. A reading of events in the company at that time is heart-rending. Against his will, he bravely rose to the occasion and surmounted the challenge.
Challenges are ever present. They come to the surface at moments of transition. He who is at the helm of affairs at that moment faces it. The situation FDR faced in 1932 was an economic challenge in the field of politics. Churchill created a military challenge for himself in 1940 when England and the whole world heard him to be fully inspired with unbelieving ears. Gandhiji returned from South Africa in 1915 to revitalize the Indian National Congress. He was given a hero’s welcome, as the National Congress was revitalized by his coming. In about five years he rose to the helm of affairs. He told us, the Indians, that his new religious weapon of Non-Violence would free the country without shedding blood. He soon emerged as the uncrowned king of India.
A challenge is a collective moment in the individual life. Mind that was born in Socrates in Greece 2500 years ago found itself emerging on the surface in the Common Man in the 16th century. Shakespeare depicted the evolutionary moment in Hamlet. Hamlet exclaimed, ‘cursed are the times’ and he was to set it right. He was the spearhead of Mind being born in the entire western world. He was a vital hero to whom his father’s ghost had given the commission to murder the offender, his uncle. The departed king laid to him the sacred charge of leaving his mother to her conscience. Hamlet was torn between the natural vital urge and the artificial duty of the Mental command. He waited for life to do his duty. Mind that was to be born in him, was born in Life.
What happens at a moment of challenge? The deeper spiritual truth that Man accomplishes what he chooses to accomplish emerges as the reality when one is challenged. Challenge is outer, Decision is inner. The inner includes the outer. The outer is seen as space. The inner is in its spiritual reality Time. Time itself is the outer objective expression of the inner Spirit. Man lives in Mind, that is, he acts in Time and Space. Time and Space coalesce to let the Spirit emerge. A challenge overcome is a moment when Spirit is born in life. Chrysler had $10 million left in the bank when her daily expenses were $50 million. She had borrowed from 400 banks. She was 23rd on the Fortune 500 list. Workers came to play cards, gamble, organize prostitution inside the factory. No executive could face them. The debt was $1700 million, a record in the world. Iacocca was trapped. He accepted the challenge. He compelled the workers to accept a cut in their pay when they demanded a great rise. He instituted discipline, dismissing 34 of the 35 vice presidents. He was merciless, denied himself a salary, risked his own life, saw it could be accomplished by a determination, asked the government to guarantee $1700 million in loans, repaid it seven years in advance, selling his cars on the TV himself, offered money-back guarantee for the first time in the car market. Human will surmounted the collective social will in a brief period. Many persuaded him to contest the election for the presidency when he went home with $20 million. Challenges are moments of human evolution. Before that, they were collective social moments for the organization to evolve to the next level of human existence.
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