OBSTACLES

One of our modern day oddysey's Booker T. Washington said the following words of wisdom: "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." - Booker Taliaferro Washington, 1856 - 1915 No one that I personally know or read about has ever reached a higher plateau or status without rejection, tears, bumps & bruises and, having doors shut in their face! Life's diverse adversities and stretching element should never come as a surprise, especially to those of us with a few hard knocks and experiences under our belt! In my personal life, which consists of 39 years with MD I have dealt with great obstacles like anyone with any type of limitation. Truly, these disabilities are our teachers east expected! Learning how to walk with a leg brace at seven was like lifting a chain and ball with me! But my obstacle gradually became unnoticeable to me! The fact that I'd need to get up earlier to get to school on time enabled me to regard life's oldest commodity--Time to better use than most would. And I'm glad I was seldom tardy (that would've been a wrse stigmatism to me!)
Obstacles are not usually meant to be removed but rather they are to move us around them, turning our sights to a different horizon, changing our often blind and prideful hearts to humility and deeper gratitude. "by the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy daily bread" the Creator spoke to Adam. As I can tell, Adam had no special treatments. Life is to be one hurdle after another. And if you've ever seen those hurdle jmpers in the Oympics, their hurdles get closer to them with each round. And so it is with lifes obstacles of all shapes and sizes!
I will close with a favorite poem:

Obstacles always from the start--
Stone growing under weighted landscapes in primordial
Matter, whose spirit flows leanly into trees, the crabbed
Roots groping for toehold while gnarled limbs breathe
Hardness from rocks into man, original and allFollowing, adamantine from mold, crossing
Equators and longitudinal lines of mindIn exploration of lands unknown, forever
Reborn in the sea change worked by earth's powerBetween beckoning and opposing poles.
All are discoverers who suck unbreathed air.
The weak and rejected of another world grow stone hard here,
Made molten first in frustration, then congealingInto flexing forms through the cold fury of work.
However they came here, all are transfigured:
From weakness to strength, from convicts to conquerors,
Serfs to survivors, meeting demands of the land.
Straddled between fire and ice these lands decree
Merging of desert and sea, of man and old habitants.
Building again the bridge leading to other worlds.
Replete with its heroes is history: resilient
Woman in wilderness childbirth, leaching legendsOf iron from hard land and looping a clevis
Of tenderness round every plow pulled in her man's world--
Dissolving gender in time's common cause
Like earth pulling to center from its separate poles.
The land is demanding--promises hard to keep--
From its pioneers, and no giving not total:Rewarding unconquerable spirits, at long last,
With vision, turned inward, of enduring stone
Singing through fragrant forests of a sweet-won rest.
Edward L. Hart is a professor emeritus of English at Brigham Young University. This poem was set to music by Robert Cundick and sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on its June 1988 tour to Australia and New Zealand. (Unconquerable by Edward L. Hart Fn, BYU Studies, vol. 29 (1989), Number 2 - Spring 1989 126.)