Special Select Story: Obstacles Overcome
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. — Henry David Thoreau Each month, Succeed and Soar shares a short video chosen to lift the heart and spirit, awareness and humanity. This select story short [below] is about the meaning of obstacles. Here are more encouragements, Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, of time. — Marabel Morgan Never, never, never give up. — Winston Churchill Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. — Napoleon Hill I can, therefore I am. — Simone Weil Click Here to View. 2 Minutes Succeed and Soar! Sandra Gould Ford The Best Journey presents wisdom for a well-lived life. The book is illustrated with vibrant photographs taken at Latrobe, Pennsylvania’s Amtrak station. The book is also a journal with space for personal notes. For groups, Illustrated Wisdom journaling workshops are available either in person or online. Preview this book. See all Radiant Tree Books Thanks for your support!
Circles and The Hero’s Journey
The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~ Ivy Baker Priest A Meditation Years ago, I founded a Creative Writing Program at the Allegheny County Jail that is now called Words Without Walls. In one class, a student said that addiction and crime had taken them to an end from which they saw no new beginning. I mentioned Joseph Campbell, the myth interpreter who believed the monsters we face [a/k/a obstacles and barriers, the difficulties, betrayals and defeats] are the vampires, hydra and furies we’ve been prepared for and that people with huge potential don’t get tiny, irksome problems. They must fight fire-breathing dragons. The Circle that is the Hero’s Journey seems designed to both reveal hidden strengths while forcing growth that could happen no other way, and be continuous. Over and again, failures allow fresh starts. Opportunities dress like challenges. Dead ends reveal paths to new beginnings on the hero’s journey that is life. Please view and enjoy this “Every Story” video. NOTE: Featured Image is “Riding The Enterprise,” (c) 2020 by Sandra Gould Ford. “Enterprise” is an amusement park ride named for the Star Trek starship.
Horseshoe Curve
There is only one map to the journey of life and it lives within your heart. — Willie Nelson Horseshoe Curve is the engineering feat that filled in two river valleys and scraped away mountain sides so that travel was quicker and less hazardous as America expanded westward. When trains could finally cross the Allegheny Mountains, they replaced the slow canal boats and the dangerous ways a portage railroad hauled them over the mountains. Otherwise, people traveled forest trails by foot, horse and oxcart. The Horseshoe was gouged out of the mountainsides and the river valleys were filled by laborers [mainly European immigrants] who used crude wheelbarrows and shovels, sledges and picks. The railroad opened on February 15, 1854. Passenger travel around the 2,375-foot-long, 1,300-foot-wide Horseshoe peaked in the 1940s, with over fifty trains a day carrying people around that 220-degree curve, which Hitler targeted as part of the Nazi plan to cripple the United States [Operation Pastorius]. Today, one silvery passenger train rounds the Horseshoe Curve, Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvania #42 approaches near ten in the morning. The westbound Pennsylvania #43 returns eight hours later. Upon approach, conductors announce the Curve. Some speak of its history and the construction. They tell riders which side of the train will face the Horseshoe so that passengers in the back can see those ahead and those in front can see where they’ve been, as well as people at the National Historic Landmark waving and applauding the travelers’ journeys, where some may experience what Lillian Smith understood, I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.