Motivation ABC

At the tender age of 21, Maya Lin submitted the controversial design that would become the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and even then, she must have been aware of the concept that she expressed so well: “To fly, we have to have resistance.”

When we watch birds fly, we watch them beat their wings against the air, fighting against it in order to soar.  Eagles and hawks glide and swoop, their wings catching against the updrafts while Canadian geese beat their wings tirelessly against the air to travel thousands of miles every year.

While the birds do make it look easy, flying is hard work, just like everything else that lets us soar above the rest.  When we strive and move forward, we cannot do it it in a vacuum.  If we try to fly with no resistance, we will get no where.  Essentially, success is not easy, and in truth, it should never be easy.  What sets us apart from the rest is the fact that we are willing to struggle and willing to move forward, even if it is hard, even if it is difficult.

When Maya Lin’s design was submitted to be memorial of all the American Veterans who fell during the Vietnam War, it met with some resistance.  Some felt that it was too aggressively minimalist, while others felt that it was an insult.  Lin herself suspected that if her name had been attached to the entry then it would not have been chosen.  After all of this, however, public opinion has turned around the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial stands today as a symbol of memory and patriotism.

When we try to fly, when we try to make ourselves better than what we might have been or try to make the world a better place, we must expect and even welcome resistance.  When the world fights us, we have a better idea of what we need to do and why our dreams and our visions are necessary.  Like the birds, we would go no where without that resistance.  We would remain on the ground, wondering what else was possible and always feeling unfulfilled.

Resistance enables flight and resistance also creates challenges.  When we are challenged, we soar further we could ever dream.  When we are challenged, we strive and work and suffer for what we believe and when we finally achieve our goals, we fully understand why we did what we did.  We can see everything that stood in our way and we know that we have beaten them.

As Maya Lin said, resistance is essential to flight and essential to success as well.