The Force of Circumstance

CEBU, Philippines — By the time of a person’s college graduation, he already has quite an established concept of himself. He will have at least a feeling whether he is to be a success or a failure. The person may continue in his daily grinds with the same characteristic disposition, but somehow the outcome of his efforts is now largely predetermined by his prevailing self-concept.

Majority of people’s failures and successes in life are nothing more or less than products of their own mental attitudes. There isn’t any philosophy of life by which a person can achieve things that he doesn’t believe he can achieve. On the other hand, the way always seems to open up for the person of determination, the person of faith and courage.

It is the victorious mental attitude – the consciousness of personal power, and the sense of inner mastery – that does the great things in our world. Many of today’s young people do not have this mental attitude, even those who are supposed to have thoroughly studied success techniques in college. To a good extent, young graduates today still need to get educated in real life.

The educational system places so much worth on the accumulation of information and the acquisition of technical skills, and too little on the development of the right attitude. Knowledge itself is nothing without the drive to put it to beneficial use. A college education is only a seed that still needs to be sown in the soil of day-to-day living, for it to bear desirable fruits.

The most brilliant intellectuals of the world are concentrated in schools and universities, earning meager incomes compared with what their average former students are getting in real-world jobs. This is not to look down on the nobility of the teaching or the academic profession; in fact, many college professors refuse better paying jobs in the corporate world out of their commitment to mould the future generations. But it’s unfortunate that the learning acquired in college seldom leaves the campus after graduation; it remains in the classrooms for yet another year of discussion – purely intellectual talk that rarely gets translated into action.

In this constantly changing world, with its complex forces all around, people sometimes tend to believe that they’re being totally driven by the force of circumstance. And yet the truth is that people only do those things that they choose to do. Even though they may not want to go a certain career path, many young people go that way because it seems to be the easier way or offers the least resistance.

The normal tendency is usually to follow that path that is easier to follow, even though it’s apparent that it will probably bring stagnation and eventual failure. There are really no victims of circumstance. Those so-called ‘victims’ create the very circumstance that victimizes them.

People are always at the crossroads of making choices – in their business dealings, in their family relationships, in their lives, in their world and affairs. That’s the challenge that young people were supposed to have been trained for in school. To be able to make the right choices, to be able to make the right decision most of the time – and to learn from their mistakes.

The solution to any problem springs from within the person. It doesn’t work to be always looking to other people or to outside circumstances to fix one’s troubles. The person who has developed the right mental attitude is most likely to find the right answers to questions, the solutions to his problems. He may continue to make mistakes, but he will make far less blunders than he would have with a wrong outlook.

Everyone have the power to decide whether they are going to be among the winners or among the losers in life. The force of circumstance is no match to the power of belief and determination. “If there is a desire in the heart, there is a way to attain it!”