In the spring of 1861, Scarlet O'Hara, a young conniving flirt, can’t bear the fact that Ashley Wilkes is getting married to a frail simple girl named Melanie. And here the story begins in the well known Gone With The Wind. As the tale continues, and the civil war progresses, Scarlet finds herself having to deliver Melanie’s child while bombs go off around her. Having to make a quick getaway, Scarlet, with the help of her friend Rhett, make it out of Atlanta where Rhett abandons her and leaves her to drive the carriage, hauling Melanie and her new-born child, through Yankees, deserters, and soldiers. After a very strenuous journey, Scarlet makes it to her home, where she finds more troubles and heartaches. She begins to rebuild her home, working for weak Melanie, and is furious when the tax is raised on it. Through lying and cheating she somehow finds herself a husband that can give her the money she needs. One day she is attacked by two black men. Another she falls down the stairs. Her father and mother both die. She kills a Yankee soldier. Her husband dies. She marries Rhett. She has a daughter, Bonnie, and she dies. After all of these monumental circumstances, Scarlet never changed, and was still a young conniving liar.
Today our circumstances are hardly dire. Once in a while you lose your job, you don’t get a good grade, you offend someone. Most of us have ever been truly starving, and our heaters and blankets keep us warm at night. But this life isn't without opposition, we are human, we still make mistakes, and we still have hardships and “trials” if you will. And for often an unknown reason, people expect you to get another job, they expect you to increase your grades, and to apologize to the person you offended. You are expected to push through trials, to fix mistakes, and to ultimately better yourself all the time. There is no doubt that humans are always refining and improving themselves. We do it naturally. You can see proof of it in a child learning to talk of their own accord. It’s exhilarating to learn a new word, take your first steps, and eat your first bite of real food. Yet……. there is something that is hindering this exhilaration. There is an inconspicuous wall that is blocking our path to refinement. This wall takes the form of a phrase. A phrase that we all somewhat believe, and it is this: circumstances refine us, so that we don’t have to refine ourselves.
Permit me to explain through the following analogy: When you are in your teens, and even younger than that, you are most likely taught to be nice to everyone, especially children. We are taught and we learn from experience that there is things you can do to be a better teacher and example towards kids. And here comes the false mentality that we all so readily and foolishly agree with: Parenthood will make us into good parents…. why not wait for that to be better?
I think we all know that this is foolish thinking, yet, don’t you somewhat believe it?.... We know things we can do to become a better parent, we have learned lessons, but then why do we wait until the last second to refine a skill? Why do we think becoming a parent will make us a good parent?
As we rely on parenthood to refine us into good parents we become dependent on our circumstances to refine us into good people.
But we are forgetting much. Circumstances, like parenthood, only have the power to teach us, not change us. Until you apply these lessons circumstances teach, they don’t make you better in any way at all. Knowing was never doing. It’s rather like the phrase, “you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” Circumstances do not refine us, the implementations of lessons learned from them, do.
In the famous story Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie Zamperini, an aspiring Olympic runner, became involved in WWII, and like many other enlisted men, Louie Zamperini and a crew of 11 crashed their plane into the Pacific Ocean. Louie, Phil, and Mac, were the only survivors. Left with two rafts, two chocolate bars, some water, and a couple other resources, they began to realize their fate. On their first morning Louie woke up to find that the chocolate bars and water were devoured by Mac. After being questioned, Mac simply stated that it didn't matter. Mac’s decided fate was obviously an impending one. It seemed impossible to see any other fate than death, yet, death was not the only fate. After many restless hours and days on their rafts, Phil and Louie began to talk to one another in an attempt to keep their minds sharp. They often asked Mac to join in, who often declined. Phil and Louie had also decided their fate, and they were determined to make it an objective one.
After 33 days in the Pacific, Mac died inevitably. Phil and Louie were still survivors after 47 days of dehydration, starvation, and torture. They still went on to survive two years in Japanese prisoner camps.
One fact remains with this story. Louie and Phil were able to look past their seemingly inescapable fate, and survived, while Mac broke down and succumbed to this "fate”, and died.
This tale proves that we can’t rely on our circumstances to refine us. Louie not only learned about being strong through intense struggle when he was younger, he WAS strong when he was younger, which made him ready to face the Pacific Ocean and all it’s horrors. Phil was a religious man and relied on God. This must have not only taught Phil to be strong, Phil decided TO BE strong. Louie and Phil made the decision to refine himself, instead of relying on their circumstances to make them admirable people. During Mac's life, he most definitely had struggles. Yet Mac had not fully practiced this unbreakable strength through struggles, therefore he was not ready to face true opposition.
We cannot rely on our circumstances to refine us, unless we want to end up like Mac.
Though this concept is rather difficult to grasp, many people truly understand it:
Brooker T. Washington said: "Character, not circumstances, makes the man." Similarly, Martha Washington stated; “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” Benjamin Disraeli: "Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our power." Thomas Jefferson: "Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
As these people understand this concept, we must understand it. If we don't….. well, lets take a look at the outcome of people who do not refine themselves. Parents everywhere are frustrated at their children and perhaps will never not be. Mac is abandoned in the great Pacific ocean, with a sad fate, and a sad ending. And finally, Scarlet O'Hara, the girl from Gone With the Wind, was left by Rhett, her third husband, right after she realized she truly loved him. She was left in complete hopelessness, with so many lessons learned but not implemented.
The outcomes of these examples were not because their circumstances led them to failure. It was because of their small acts of unwillingness to change. It’s easy to be left just like them, with deep sadness, little amount of self worth, and an inability to face upcoming struggles.
How can we avoid this fate? How can we overcome this wall of not understanding circumstances that is blocking our path to refinement?
The answer is simple: We must decide to refine ourselves. When circumstances teach us a flaw, we must fix and refine this flaw.
To do this, we can learn from other people struggles and circumstances. We can refine ourselves from others experiences, and be ready for circumstances similar to their own. Read the story unbroken, and find yourself becoming more unbroken. Listen to Scarlet O’Hara’s story, and change in yourself, what you see she needs to change in herself. Find people who have truly come to understand this concept, people like Martha Washington and Benjamin Disreali, and come to understand it as they have.
We all want to be better, it’s in our nature. We celebrate becoming better every year on our birthdays. And in order to permit this natural feeling to carry us forward on the path of refinement, we must tear down this wall built with the indoctrinated belief that circumstances make us better, so all we have to do is "bear the trial." We must tear down this long forgotten wall. I have made you notice it, I have brought it to your remembrance. So now we must tear down this wall we have built with tears of self pity glistening in our eyes, brick by brick. We will tear down these circumstances, these despicable excuses.
Ladies and gentlemen, We CANNOT rely on circumstances to refine us, we must decide to refine ourselves.
Today our circumstances are hardly dire. Once in a while you lose your job, you don’t get a good grade, you offend someone. Yet a day will come, when you are faced with profound hunger, complete cold, or teaming sorrow. And you will see either, hope, or hopelessness.
Decide now.
As Ella Wheeler Wilcox once wrote:
“We will be what we could be. Do not say,
"It might have been, had not this, or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
He only might who is.”
