Everyone has a baton

There is a story in "Harvard Family Lessons" called "Everyone Has a Baton". Walter Damrosch, the famous American music conductor and composer, became a band conductor in his 20s. He was a young man with high aspirations and high spirits.

One day, he went to rehearsal as usual, and when he was about to start, he realized that he forgot to bring the conductor to support. The assistant told him to borrow one. Walter thought it was incredible. He was the conductor of the whole band. Who could he borrow it from? He tried to ask, "Who has a conductor, can you lend me a little?"

As soon as the words fell, the cellist, principal violinist, and pianist all took out the baton from their pockets. This scene deeply shocked Walter. In the eyes of others, he has never been irreplaceable. Many people even secretly worked hard and wanted to replace him at any time. In this position, rather than saying that he is irreplaceable, it is better to say that he has the upper hand. Competitors are everywhere. If you can't keep improving, you will be eliminated by their competitors one day in the future.

Since then, Walter has worked harder, thinking of these three baton whenever he is complacent. We often hear some sentimental language: you are unique, you are irreplaceable. No one dislikes such kind words, but no matter how beautiful the language is, it cannot change the cruel "law of the jungle" we have to face in real life. Nothing is irreplaceable, and powerful people are running hard.

I remember watching a TV series once, an old man warned young people: "If you want to live on the merits of the past, no matter how rich your family is, you will be ruined. Those who have a sense of crisis may not necessarily have a crisis, and there is no sense of crisis. There will be a crisis for those who are not." Anyone can be replaced, and our only choice is to replace the less mature self in the past with a better you.

People often ask things like: How do you succeed? I say, do you know your great-grandfather's name? Do you know the hardship your neighbor's family is going through? Does the same thing keep going? If you don't know, you don't, then the answer is obvious. If you know, you are doing this, then you are close to the window of success.

We often see people like this, who walk in the spring breeze with their heads held high every day, their eyes shining like a torch, and they never seem to care about the little troubles and small gains and losses at hand. I told my young friends, the reason is very simple, because they have lofty goals, their eyes are thousands of miles away, where will they notice the ditches and ridges in front of them?

On the contrary, if a person's goal in life is too low, or there is no goal at all, and his eyes are like beans, he will care about trivial matters every day, complain about others, and trouble himself every day. I believe in this sentence: "Any successful person must have a humiliating life experience buried deep in his heart." Therefore, when we see a person shining brightly, we should explore his experience, from Find the secret to success there.

Some people think that when a person succeeds, he finds a destination for his life. In fact, it is not the case. The reason why all successful people are different from ordinary people is that they have such a nature: they are never satisfied with what has been discovered, they will never stop moving forward, they will never be content with the status quo, and they will never be satisfied with the status quo. On the road of experimentation and exploration. I often use a poem by Mr. Sang Hengchang, a great poet, as a motto to remind myself: "In order to realize your ideal, go all the way to the dark, and then continue to go to the dark place."

The greater the achievement, the less you have in common with ordinary people. Therefore, a successful person, even if his achievements are recognized by the world, he is still alone. He is bound to be misunderstood, snubbed and even mocked. Because, the vast majority of people will not understand him, nor will they agree with him, they will seize some details of his past that have once humiliated him, and even spread it fermented. And this kind of experience is precisely the experience that makes the successful people move towards more brilliant.u.