Faith

Faith on one's self is an absolute necessary for taking on stiff challeneges. The kind of faith as illustrated by this old story :

A bird had built its nest on the seashore, but one day the waves carried her eggs away. The distraught bird first prayed to the sea to return the eggs, but receiving no reply she threatened the sea that she would empty it. With still no response coming from the sea, she decided to carry out her threat. With a leaf of grass held in her beak, she proceeded to empty the sea with it, one drop at a time.

Empty the sea drop by drop with a blade of grass ! You must be joking !!Sounds pretty dumb, right ?

Yes it does.

But then when a school master's son called Dhirubhai had dreamt of building a global Fortune 500 company, I am sure a lot of people would have thought him to be dumb too.

Or when a school droput called Bill Gates had a vision of computers becoming personal and installed at homes, he would have also sounded dumb to a good number of people.

And when a hadnful of women monks of Sarada Math took up a barren garbage dump to build an ashram (see this post), I am absolutely sure people in the neighbourhood would have taken them as a good case study in dumbness.

There is an old Sanskrit saying :

Udyoginam purushasimham upaiti lakshmi
Daivena deyamiti kapurusha vadanti
Daivam nihatya kuru paurusham atmashaktya
Yatne krte yadi na sidhhyati ko’tra doshah

Lakshmi (fortune) comes to that lion among human beings who is industrious - the coward says that he depends upon fate. Throwing away all concepts of destiny be industrious through your own inner strength; in spite of all your efforts if you do not succeed , what is wrong in it ?

No achievement is possible without faith. A faith ready to take on seemingly impossible challenges. A faith that can proceed to empty an ocean with a blade of grass.