LIFE’S LESSONS
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Who hasn’t heard of the Hollywood movie, La La Land? I’m not sure if everyone has seen it, but because of the controversy that happened during the Oscar ceremony in 2017, it became known throughout the world.
First, La La Land was first declared as the winner of Best Picture. But a few minutes later, the producers of Moonlight took over the center stage as the independent film was the real winner of the prestigious trophy.
La La Land didn’t get the Best Picture alright, but it won Damien Chazelle the coveted Best Director award (getting the distinction as the youngest ever, at the age of 32, to get it). Emma Stone was also adjudged Best Actress winner.
What most Filipinos don’t know is that La La Land was almost never done. “Damien had a tough time convincing others of the viability of his vision,” a movie scribe reported. He waited for six years for his love letter to old school Hollywood cinema to get from script to screen.
In an interview with New York Magazine, the scriptwriter-director believed he ultimately made the movie at the right time in his career. “I look back now and think I caught a lucky break. I probably wasn’t ready to do the movie until I did it and, initially, I was a little naïve about the resources we needed for the movie,” he was quoted as saying.
Six years is too long, indeed, but Chazelle waited, and waited, and waited. He was not alone in his dilemma, however. Before he became a best-selling author, Stephen King admitted that he hammered a nail into the wall when he was younger, and kept all his rejection slips there, until he accumulated 100 slips. In his wonderful On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he wrote: “When you get to 100, give yourself a pat on the back… You’ve arrived.”
Charles R. Swindoll is one of my favorite American authors. In one of his bestselling books, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life, he narrated this story that I could not forget:
“Ignace Jan Paderewski, the famous composer-pianist, was scheduled to perform at a great concert hall in America. It was an evening to remember – black tuxedos and long evening dresses, a high-society extravaganza. Present in the audience that evening was a mother with her fidgety nine-year-old son. Weary of waiting, he squirmed constantly in the seat. His mother was hoping that her son would be encouraged to practice the piano if he could just hear the immortal Paderewski at the keyboard. So, against his wishes, he had come.
“As she turned to talk with friends, her son could no longer stay seated. He slipped away from her side, strangely drawn to the ebony concert grand Steinway and its leather tufted stool on the huge stage flooded with blinding lights. Without much notice from the sophisticated audience, the boy sat down at the stool, staring wide-eyed at the black and white keys. He placed his small, trembling fingers in the right location and began to play ‘Chopsticks.’ The roar of the crowd was hushed as hundreds of frowning faces pointed in his direction. Irritated and embarrassed, they began to shout:
“‘Get that boy away from here!’
“‘Who’d bring a kid that young in here?’
“‘Where’s his mother?’
“‘Somebody stop him!’
“Backstage, the master overheard the sounds out front, and quickly put together in his mind what was happening. Hurriedly, he grabbed his coat and rushed toward the stage. Without one word of announcement, he stooped over behind the boy, reached around both sides, and began to improvise a countermelody to harmonize with the enhanced ‘Chopsticks.’ As the two of them played together, Paderewski kept whispering in the boy’s ear: ‘Keep going. Don’t quit. Keep on playing. Don’t stop, don’t quit.’”
Don’t stop, don’t quit. What a convincing proposition. Winners, they say, never quit. Quitters never win. “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence,” John Calvin Coolidge reminds. “Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Thomas Alva Edison was perhaps the greatest inventor in history with over 1,000 patents issued to his name. He changed the lives of millions of people through such inventions as the electric light and phonograph. His statement, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” is one of the most often-quoted lines.
Perhaps it may come to you as a surprise that this American inventor had only three months of formal schooling. Historical records show that he knew more failures than successes. For 13 months, Edison kept on searching for a filament that would stand the stress of electric current. As he pondered whether he would be able to discover the elusive thing, he got a note from people backing his experiment that they would no longer be giving additional funds for what he was then doing.
News like that may bring a person to quit, but not Edison. In fact, it did not deter him from continuing his work. He refused to admit defeat and worked without sleep for two more days and nights. Eventually, he managed to insert one of the crude carbonized threads into a vacuum-sealed bulb. “When we turned on the current,” he recalled, “the sight we had so long desired finally met our eyes!”
Before that, however, Edison had to endure a string of failures. “What a waste! We have tried no less than 700 experiments, and nothing has worked. We are not a bit better off than when we started,” a couple of men who were working alongside him had said. He just shrugged off this comment, telling them, “Oh yes, we are! We now know 700 things that won’t work. We’re closer than we’ve ever been before.”
It is only in the dictionary that success comes first before work. Instant success is a mere flash in the pan. Not everyone can attain that. You must work your way to reach the top. “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times, without as much as a crack showing in it,” Jacob Rus revealed. “Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it – but all that had gone before.”
“Many people fail in life because they believe in the adage: If you don’t succeed, try something else,” American author Don B. Owens, Jr. observed. “But success eludes those who follow such advice. Virtually everyone has had dreams at one time or another, especially in youth. The dreams that have come true did so, because people stuck to their ambitions. They refused to be discouraged. They never let disappointment get the upper hand. Challenges only spurred them on to greater effort.”
Never give up. “Lots of people limit their possibilities by giving up easily,” bestselling author Norman Vincent Peale points out. “Never tell yourself this is too much for me. It’s no use. I can’t go on. If you do, you’re licked, and by your own thinking, too. Keep believing and keep on keeping on.” – ###
