When God wishes to train a man and raise him to a high...

When God wishes to train a man and raise him to a high station He sends him to the school of necessity and need not to that of ease and good fortune. Take two acorns each of which has been plucked from the same oak tree and which are almost identical. Plant them in two separate places one on a mountain slope and another in a dense forest. Then observe how their roots grow.

The oak that grows on the mountainside where it has to withstand wind rain and storms runs its roots in all directions and grows into a sturdy and shadowy tree. But the oak planted he oak in the woods since it is situated under the shadow of other trees grows to be lean and weak. In the same way take two boys who are about similar and bring them up in two different places.

That is put one of them in an environment where he is forced to face hard and difficult conditions right from his childhood and is deprived of wealth or any kind of supports. Such a one should he stumble and fall will get up again with a firmer determination like a ball which bounces to a greater height the more forcefully it is hit against the ground. The greater the obstacles he encounters the more determined he will become.

But the other child brought up in ease and plenty and in the care of a team of nurses who got everything he desired and had lots of money will be less resistant in the face of hardship and will break down sooner.1 The Bounteous Source of Strength Every human being is innately endowed with the capacity to face adversity. It is our duty to employ our resources for encountering adverse conditions and bring our remarkable powers into action.

Man's latent inner powers comprise a bounteous source whose treasures are never exhausted. In fact the more they are put to use the more profuse their flow becomes. Despair and despondency and the inability to resist hardship are not due to any inborn lack of capacity.

Rather it is the chain of despair and faint heartedness which shackles the hands of some people and neutralizes their power of resistance to problems: this kind of people fall victim to a kind of paralyzing confusion and perplexity when faced with any trivial difficulty. Their spirit and morale can even be totally shattered in a single encounter with some sudden tragedy which makes them lose their poise and equilibrium.

It is harder to remedy this weakness of character than any other moral inadequacy.