For a moment the unearthly stillness of the desert enveloped us.
Then Newman said, “My father once told me a story I always think of, when the going gets rough and things look hopeless. It’s about Destiny…. Destiny came down to an island, centuries ago, and summoned three of the inhabitants before him. ‘What would you do,’ asked Destiny, ‘if I told you that tomorrow this island will be completely inundated by an immense tidal wave?'’ The first man, who was a cynic, said, ‘Why, I would eat, drink, carouse and make love all night long!’ The second man, who was a mystic, said, ‘I would go to the sacred grove with my loved ones and make sacrifices to the gods and pray without ceasing.’ And the third man, who loved reason, thought for a while, confused and troubled, and said, ‘Why, I would assemble our wisest men and begin at once to study how to live under water.’ “I, too, never forgot that story. When our cause seems doomed and the future lost, when despair becomes unbearable and the heart is on the edge of breaking, let men summon hope and honor and high resolve in yet one more stubborn affirmation: Come, let us assemble our wisest men and begin at once to think, to study, to try to learn – even to learn, if we must, how to live under water.”
Leo Rosten, Captain Newman, M.D. (closing lines)
All it takes sometimes is a look into the mirror to see how far I've come.
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