The Poem

The seventh grade, Sister Alberta. She was the one nun we all dreaded having as our teacher in the Catholic school I attended. A no-nonsense dictator. I swear that she had ESP and could read our thoughts. I just knew she had eyes in the back of her head under the black habit the Benedictine Order of nuns wore in the 1930s. The ruler, whacked across our open palms, was the punishment administered if we did not have our homework. I only experienced it one time, and that convinced me she had a no-nonsense personality.

The boys sat on one side of the room, the girls on the other. An aisle dividing us was Sister Alberta’s monitoring path, where she paced back and forth to keep our teenage minds on the boring subjects and not on our peers.

When I complained to my parents that she was a tyrant, I got no sympathy. “She is there to do God’s work,” my mother explained.

I must tell you how we were greeted on our first day in her classroom. “Take out your notebooks and copy the poem written on the chalkboard. I expect you to memorize it; beginning next week, you all should know it by memory. Every morning when class begins, I will randomly choose one of you to recite the poem, and if you fail to recite it correctly, you will be punished in front of the class.”

This is the poem:

There was a noble Roman in Rome’s imperiled days.
Who heard a coward croaker before the castle say,
“They are safe in such a fortress,
There is no way to shake it.”
“On, on,” exclaimed one hero,
Let’s find a way or make it.”

After the second week, one ruler chastising was all it took for me to remember it. Today, seventy-five years later, I can still recite the poem verbatim.

But that’s not why I am telling you this incident that made such an indelible impression on me. Over the years, whenever I had an obstacle or desire I wanted to achieve, I swear I heard a small voice in my brain repeat loud and clear, “Find a way or make it!”

There are no personal problems that cannot be overcome by quiet, persistent treatment and the appropriate, wise activity.

If you have a personal disability that seems to keep you from success, do not accept it as such, but capitalize on it and use it as the instrument for your success.

H.G. Wells had to give up a dull, underpaid job because of ill health, so he stayed at home and wrote stories and became a world-famous author. Edison was stone deaf, but that didn’t stop him from spending his time working on inventions. Beethoven did his work in spite of his deafness. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child, and doctors told his parents that he would always be a bedridden invalid. He worked hard to develop his body and became a strong husky outdoorsman. Our twenty-sixth president; he was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Whatever you think your disability is, capitalize it. Your particular problem will always seem to be especially difficult, but courageous determination can overcome anything. Find a Way or Make It!

Make peace with your past so it won’t screw-up the present.

No one is in charge of your happiness but YOU!