HABIT AND FAILURE

The Buzzard, The Bat, and the Bumblebee

If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eightfeet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, inspite of his ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins aflight from the ground with a run of ten or twelvefeet. Without space to run, as is his habit, he willnot even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisonerfor life in a small jail with no top.

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, aremarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take offfrom a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slightelevation from which it can throw itself into the air.Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

A Bumblebee if dropped into an open tumbler will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It neversees the means of escape at the top, but persists intrying to find some way out through the sides near thebottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until itcompletely destroys itself.

In many ways, there are lots of people like thebuzzard, the bat and the bee. They are strugglingabout with all their problems and frustrations, notrealizing that the answer is right there above them.

POWER OF IGNORANCE

As a college student, George studied very hard and always late in the night... So late that he overslept one morning, arriving 20 minutes late for class. He quickly copied the two math problems on the board, assuming they were the homework assignment.

It took him several days to work through the two problems but finally he had a breakthrough and dropped the homework on the professor's desk the next day. Later, on a Sunday morning, George was awakened at 6 a.m. by his excited professor. Since George was late for class, he hadn't heard the professor announce that the two unsolvable equations on the board were mathematical mind teasers that even Einstein hadn't been able to answer. But George Dantzig, working without any thoughts of limitation, had solved not one, but two problems that had stumped mathematicians for thousands of years.

Simply put, George solved the problems because he didn't know he couldn't.

The Fred Factor

“The Fred Factor” is a book written by Mark Sanborn.It’s a beautifully written book which emphasizes on how easy it is, for human beings to provide extraordinary service to others and yet most of us fail to do so. The author talks about Fred, his postal carrier who has lot of zeal and creativity. Though in his job as a postman, he could hardly get recognition from his employer, he was always keen about providing service out of his way to his customers. He took special care of each and every customer of his and the author happened to be one of them. When he was new to the place where Fred was a post man, Fred came and introduced himself to Mark, welcomed him to his new neighborhood, understood his schedule and delivered his posts accordingly. Not only this, Fred gave him useful inputs about how burglars watch the piling up mails and come to know that there is no one at home and loot the house. The author, so impressed with his way, termed this positive behavior as The Fred Factor after which many organizations started Fred awards.
The author after meeting Fred started observing Fred like behavior in people he met. Some of the experiences really helped me understand what this behavior is. He says once he unfortunately did not have enough money for his travel when he went out of station for some presentation. An unknown person comforted him and gave money that was more than his requirement. The author was a stranger to that man. He was not aware if he would get it back. Yet he helped the author out of his way. Mark Sanborn later says that he sent the money back to him promptly as soon as he reached his place. Mark calls this behavior of the stranger as Fred like behavior.
Another time, Mark was in a travel with one set of good clothes other than the one that he was wearing. It was night time and he had to wait in a hotel to board his flight till morning in the airport. Something spilled over on his dress and no laundry service was available at that time. While he checked with a lady who was working there, she readily offered to take it home and bring it the following morning. Next day, she brought his dress not only after wash but also neatly pressed. He saw another Fred in her.
SO FRIENDS LET US BE ANOTHER "FRED" AND HELP THE SOCIETY.