“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
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In one of his books, bestselling author John C. Maxwell shares this story: One day, a group of boys was hiking in the woods when they stumbled upon a section of an old, abandoned railroad track that extended through the trees. One boy leaped onto a rail and attempted to walk along it. After taking a few steps, he lost his balance. Another boy soon followed suit, but he too fell. The rest of the group laughed at their misfortune.
“I bet you can’t do it either,” he taunted the others. One by one, the boys took their turns, but all of them failed. Even the most athletic among them could not manage more than a dozen steps without tripping.
Then, two of the boys began to whisper to one another, and one of them issued a challenge to the rest: “I can walk on the rail all the way to the end, and so can he.” He gestured towards his friend.
“No, you can’t,” replied one of the other boys who had already attempted and failed.
“I bet you a candy bar each that we can!” he replied, and the other boys agreed.
Subsequently, each of the two boys who had posed the challenge climbed onto a rail, extended an arm, clasped hands with one another, and cautiously traversed the entire distance.
Maxwell concludes his story with this statement: “As individuals, they could not meet the challenge. But working together, they easily won. The power of collaboration is multiplication.”
“United we stand,” as a song lyric suggests, “divided we fall.” John Donne emphasized that no man is an island. One is ineffective without the other. This is why we cherish our friendships.
“The greatest service one can perform is to be a friend to someone,” C. Neil Strait remarked. “Friendship is not only doing something for someone, but it is caring for someone, which is what every person needs.” With friends around, cooperation is not a problem.
Two spirited heifers were grazing in the field. They were connected by a long rope. The farmer approached with two buckets of water and positioned them sufficiently apart to prevent the young cows from fighting over their drinks.
As soon as the farmer departed, a genuine struggle ensued. Each cow desired to reach its respective bucket of water, but the rope was too short. They tugged, pulled, and became agitated. Their tempers flared, their hearts raced, and they began to sweat. Ultimately, in complete fatigue, they both collapsed to rest, now thirstier than they had ever been.
Then one of the heifers remarked to the other, “We are fighting for no reason, and neither of us is getting any water. Why don’t we work together instead of against each other? First, let’s both go over and drink from my bucket. After that, we can return and drink from yours.”
And that is precisely what they did. It proved to be effective: both satisfied their thirst. They had grasped the importance of collaboration.
Someone once pointed out: “We can see that life is a cycling phenomenon which occurs in many forms within a single system. Nothing stands alone – no individual, species, or community; no rain drop, cloud or stream; no mountain and no sea – for in a cycle each thing in one way or another is connected with everything else.”
In life, we either succeed or fail. Successes often happen to those who believe that without others they won’t be able to reach the top. Success, after all, is a direct result of the efforts of the individual and the support and encouragement of another person or persons.
Many people have gone a lot farther than they thought they could because someone else thought they could. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a good example, according to Zig Ziglar, author of Something to Smile About.
“(Hawthorne) was discouraged and had a broken heart when he went home to tell his wife, Sophia, that he was a failure because he had been fired from his job in the customhouse,” Ziglar wrote.
“Upon hearing the news, she startled him with an exuberant exclamation of joy. ‘Now,’ she said triumphantly, ‘you can write your book!’ To that, Hawthorne responded with the question, ‘What are we going to live on while I am writing this book?’
“To his surprise and delight, she opened a drawer and drew out a substantial sum of money. ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked. ‘I’ve always known you were a man of genius,’ she told him, ‘and I knew that someday you would write a masterpiece, so every week, out of the money you gave me for housekeeping, I saved part of it. Here’s enough to last us for a whole year.’
“From his wife’s trust, confidence, thrift, and care planning came one of the classics of American literature – The Scarlet Letter. That story can be repeated a few thousand times – or make that a few million. It happens all the time.”
Give those who have helped you the proper credit – for without them, you won’t get what you long for. Sydney J. Harris believes: “People want to be appreciated, not impressed. They want to be regarded as human beings, not as sounding boards for other people’s egos. They want to be treated as an end in themselves, not as a means toward the gratification of another’s vanity.”
