"I made friends with the natives, and their reaction amazed me. When I showed interest
in their weaving and pottery, they gave me presents of their favourite pieces which they
had refused to sell to tourists. I studied the fascinating forms of the cactus and the
yuccas and the Joshua trees. I learned about prairie dogs, watched for the desert
sunsets, and hunted for seashells that had been left there millions of years ago when
the sands of the desert had been an ocean floor.
"What brought about this astonishing change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn't
changed. The Indians hadn't changed. But I had. I had changed my attitude of mind.
And by doing so, I transformed a wretched experience into the most exciting adventure
of my life. I was stimulated and excited by this new world that I had discovered. I was so
excited I wrote a book about it-a novel that was published under the title Bright
Ramparts. ... I had looked out of my self-created prison and found the stars."
Thelma Thompson, you discovered an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred
years before Christ was born: "The best things are the most difficult."
Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated it again in the twentieth century: "Happiness is not
mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory." Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of
achievement, of triumph, of turning our lemons into lemonades.
I once visited a happy farmer down in Florida who turned even a poison lemon into
lemonade. When he first got this farm, he was discouraged. The land was so wretched
he could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs. Nothing thrived there but scrub oaks and
rattlesnakes. Then he got his idea. He would turn his liability into an asset: he would
make the most of these rattlesnakes. To everyone's amazement, he started canning
rattlesnake meat. When I stopped to visit him a few years ago, I found that tourists were
pouring in to see his rattlesnake farm at the rate of twenty thousand a year. His
business was thriving. I saw poison from the fangs of his rattlers being shipped to
laboratories to make anti-venom toxin; I saw rattlesnake skins being sold at fancy prices
to make women's shoes and handbags. I saw canned rattlesnake meat being shipped to
customers all over the world. I bought a picture postcard of the place and mailed it at the
local post office of the village, which had been re-christened "Rattlesnake, Florida", in
honour of a man who had turned a poison lemon into a sweet lemonade.
As I have travelled up and down and back and forth across America time after time, it
has been my privilege to meet dozens of men and women who have demonstrated
"their power to turn a minus into a plus".
The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods, put it like this: "The most
important thing in life is not to capitalise on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really
important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the
difference between a man of sense and a fool."
Bolitho uttered those words after he had lost a leg in a railway accident. But I know a
man who lost both legs and turned his minus into a plus. His name is Ben Fortson. I met
him in a hotel elevator in Atlanta, Georgia. As I stepped into the elevator, I noticed this
cheerful-looking man, who had both legs missing, sitting in a wheel-chair in a corner of
the elevator. When the elevator stopped at his floor, he asked me pleasantly if I would
step to one corner, so he could manage his chair better. "So sorry," he said, "to
inconvenience you"-and a deep, heart-warming smile lighted his face as he said it.
When I left the elevator and went to my room, I could think of nothing but this cheerful
cripple. So I hunted him up and asked him to tell me his story.