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Show High Time lite MEEQSS By FLORENCE BITTNER What makes the difference between success and failure? NOW THERE'S a question. Hardly one which can be answered ans-wered in half a dozen inches of a newspaper column, yet it is the- most vital question I have to answer. I am running a people factory. fac-tory. Probably the only product I will leave behind when I join the Great Majority is the finished people I developed from some babies. So I have to ask myself this question every day and look at my product and see whether we're headed in the right direction. 1 INSIST on my own definition defini-tion of success. The definition I reject is the one that is $ucce$$ as viewed by our dollar oriented society. "Reach," 1 tell my boys. "Way beyond your grasp. Don't ever be satisfied with good enough." Then 1 like to point out to them some magnificent mag-nificent failures. i ABRAHAM Lincoln lost every election except the last two, and he considered himself him-self a failure when he was way into his middle years. Rembrandt died in poverty and neglect. His work was summed up in a book in 1725 as "...rottenness.. .with his so-called red and yellow tones, he set the fatal example shadows so hot they seemed actually aglow." LEONARDO Da Vinci considered con-sidered himself and was thought of as a failure since he failed to develop the flying machine which was his life's dream and because so many of the projects he had begun were incomplete as he never reached the end of any trail. Herman Melville could not support himself by his writing writ-ing and had to work as a clerk in a warehouse to earn enough to keep eating. THE GREATEST man who ever lived was rejected by his contemporaries and unheard of by most of the world when he died. As a matter of fact, he is still unknown to most of the people on earth. The great ones seem to have had a vision which they had to pu.sue-a suspiciion of something no one else saw. , They suspected something . then proceeded to prove it. THEY'RE LIKE the traveller who began at a destination des-tination then went back and mapped out the route so others who can't see would be able to follow. Where did they get this vision? Most of them seem to have had it in spite of - rarely because of their parents or their environment. IT SEEMS that if a boy has a certain direction in him, he will go that way no matter what obstacles are put in his way. If he doesn't have that direction inside himself, he won't get there no matter how hard I push. Most of us aren't among the great ones, however, and probably my finished products from this people factory will come somewhere between prime specimens and rejects. So how do I judge whether they are a success or failure? THE HARDEST thing I have to do is pull off the rose colored blinders and take an objective look at the rough product I shove out the door every school morning. I sometimes suspect the only influence I will really have on them is their habits and attitudes. Those are important, im-portant, but not the really basic snips and snails and puppy dog tails little boys are made of. They come with the snips and snails ready in them. I CAN teach them to keep themselves clean, to observe the customs of society and stay off other people's toes, but I can't put the vision in them. If they've got it, they'll go after it. If they haven't got it they'll live with the rest of us who follow other people's visions. What is a success? What is a failure? I DON'T know. That's my vision-to find out what makes people run and why so many are content to crawl. Here I am, superintendent in charge of production in a people factory and I don't even know the specifications for measuring the finished product. ONE THING I do know. There aren't any guarantees with my product. And there's no chance to run the rejects back through the production line. Trouble with this job is by the time I find out how to keep from making mistakes, it's too late to correct them. What is a success? Ask me in another twenty years. |