What determination can do for you.
NUMBER ONE, It can put you on your feet again, when you are down and out.
NUMBER TWO, It can induce the unseen forces in the universe to back you, in as much your are still following a good cause.
When life burns, it also bears up!
The story of Glenn Cunningham, to my heart fits into what my desciption of ‘living determination’ is.
Difficulties can’t stop you, if you don’t stop yourself. If you are ready to learn to grow, you will in no time earn your rewards so cheaply.
History has it that in Cunningham’s class in those days, he was the one tasked by the teacher with the duty of warming the classroom with a burning pot of fire having logs inside, as the cold was too much an unbearable menace. Unknown to him on an ill-fated morning, that an anonymous person has unduely soaked and filled the pot with woods with gasoline, he proceeded as usual to light the fire for warming the classroom. The hissing ”wohssssh’ which greeted his face was the blasting explosion that flared up and consumed the poor boy, with his brother, Floyd. (Floyd died as a result of that hell experience). But for help which came in time, the duo would have been a total, unwanted roast.
All this while Glenn Cunningham was about seven. This incident saw him landed in the hospital where he was in untold thorough pains, wrapped with bandaged in the legs and in many days he hovered between consciousness to unconsciousness back and forth; the parents in anguish as a result of.
Having learnt of his brother’s death, his mother refused to have his legs amputated in good faith, so as not to lose ”all”.
The bad became worse when in the conversation, boy Cuningham overheard the doctors’ saying that he would never be able to walk again telling the mother.
Upon discharge, the outlook of the half-alive Cunningham was of a discouragement: one leg was now shorter than the other, with about 2 inches. The toes of the left foot have been consumed, likewise the flesh on the knee and the shins. In those times, the medical world has not yet come of age to master flesh grafting and transplant.
Days became weeks, then months with no sign that he could ever walk again: banned into the wheel chair, confined into a timeless immobility.
The untold began to happen in the summer of 1919, while his mother wheeled him out for some fresh air, and she returned inside for a purpose. This time Cunningham, tired of a life of torture in the wheel chair and was determined to walk again, threw himself out of the wheel chair into the hands of faith in the open field. He crawled his way into the white picket fence about the house; he managed to stand straight with all the strength on earth in him to drag along the fence standing, the mother only came out to be awed with what she saw.
He then started managing to walk like this for weeks until he beat a path along the fence. Overtime this he did, months after, the legs began to gain life again, but they hurt indeed. He later made a discovery that it was more convenient for him running than walking, and so on every errand he was sent to accomplish, in the neighbourhood he was always running.
This was how Cunningham who not only desired to walk but also run discovered his destiny by an accident. By the time he was twelve, though with legs having scars, in the high school, he won records of the fastest runner until he came to the national scene.
This was a write-off, who but staged a comeback, and he did come back and you are reading about him this day.
Determination to succeed is the backbone of success, without it, failure will stage against us an absolute mockery.
