Reach Beyond Your Grasp by Roy Purczinsky, April 4, 1976
I’m delighted to be here, and I appreciate the invitation for the opportunity to share with you a concept of life that I think is so important. You know, really the most important part of the success of any business or industry or any adventure – the most important guarantee for success is the person.
It scares me a little about the mood of America today. It seems to me that the mood of America today is one in which people are sitting back and demanding results without making any initiative or efforts to bring about these results.
We had a young man that worked with us when we first acquired the plant at McCook that told me how fast he was going to become an officer in the company, how much money he was expecting to make and all the things he demanded out of life. I told him, I said, “Listen Doug, it’s not what you demand, it’s not what you want, but it’s what you are as a person that brings success.”
And I think that we have people who are the disciplines, the ones who care, who are concerned about doing well what they are doing today. And on the other hand, the careless, and one of the tragedies about the mood of our nation is that we have forced ourselves into a pattern whereby we comfort the careless even with a lack of productivity. And folks, I am confident of one thing, and that is a man feels his best when he does his best, whether it is from the time we were in highschool or college, or whether we were trainees on a job or watching our children, you know when you do a poor job, you feel it inside. When you put a little extra effort and arrange some additional amount of investment of time and creativity, and work in preparing a certain amount of work, when you do your best, you feel your best – there’s no question about it.
People need to be inspired and lifted up to realize that they can do more tomorrow than they are doing today. The tragedy is the way we pull the ceiling down upon ourselves. You know it is kind of like when I was sitting in the clinic waiting my turn for a physical examination, and the nurse was dragging a guy in that was really sick. They put him in a little examining room around the corner, and I couldn’t help but hear the conversation. The man was all choked up with pain – it was in his stomach, his chest and his back – everything hurt. The doctor looked this man over real good and he said, “Sam, you are a sick man.” The fellow said – “I know Doc.” The doctor said, “You know Sam, the best thing for you is to give up your drinking, your smoking, and your chasing the women.” This really hit the guy because he liked to live a little bit, and he threw his head right in his hands and stared at the floor for about five minutes. Finally he said, “Doc, if that is the best thing for me, what is second best?”
It’s kind of like some years back when this young man came into the pastor’s office because his mother told him to go see the preacher before going into the service. He was going into military service the next day. He came into the office confident, happy, proud, his shoulders were back and he stood tall and straight. He said, “Pastor, I’m glad to go into the military service.” The pastor said, “Well, Roger, that is tremendous. Why are you going into the military?” Roger said, “There are three reasons I am going into the military service. In the first place, I want to be a patriotic young American boy and serve my country. The second reason is that I want to build up my body, I want to be strong physically. The third reason is because they came and got me.”
You see there is some of this same kind of feeling in our lives and with the people whom we work with. The people who are content to say with the dawn of each new day – what is second best is ok. Or the people who are standing by in the corners of life and saying, if you want me to do a job, come and get me. I am not going to take the initiative, and I am not going to make any new and bright suggestions. I am not going to put in a little extra time, I am not going to do something a little above what is expected of me. If you want me to perform, you come and get me.
In the popular play on broadway, the Don Quixote story, Man of LaMancha, that received so many awards, there is a phrase in the story that tells the secret of your life and mine when it says, “Every man must weave a dream into his life to keep him from despair”. You see folks, whatever you are doing today, you can do better tomorrow and you will feel better for doing it because as Robert Browning said, “Unless a man’s reach exceeds his grasp, what is heaven for?”
The rungs of a ladder were never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to raise the other somewhat higher. And from the day that man is born until the day he dies he not only has the opportunity, but the responsibility to climb and to grow and to develop and to achieve. I am confident that we can do more than we are doing right now, and I am confident that if we really want to, we can become better persons.
The tragedy in life is that we only recognize the people who excel above everyone else. Every man can reach his own potential. It starts the day when we realize that we are going to reach beyond what we are able to do today. It begins when we understand that we are going to weave a dream into our life that we can do more tomorrow than what we are doing today. And it all begins on the first rung of the ladder. The first rung on the ladder is a desire to succeed, the desire to try new ideas, the desire to dream, the desire to think brand new thoughts, the desire to have new attitudes toward other people, the desire to take another look at your location and the work you are doing and the people you are working with. It is a desire to do something new.
I have never in my life been in a situation where I started at the top. I didn’t grow up in the finest surroundings of a big city, in fact, I grew up on a small farm in Texas. And when I started my profession, I didn’t start at managing a feed manufacturing plant. The strongest people I know are the people who take their place and job in life and realize that the job is not too small for them, and then they can grow and develop.
We interview at the major universities and sometimes have a difficult time hiring the new graduates. These college graduates are oftentimes attracted by the big bundle someone is offering – and sometimes a man forgets to realize that it’s the bundle that gets frozen. A man that is willing to start a little lower and to grow will surpass them everytime.
But you see, this is the way we think. We grab and we grasp a hold of ourselves while our reach must always exceed our grasp, and we must always realize that we are not asking for other people to protect us – that the success we desire in life is not out of demand. It is not what I demand you to do for me – all every man asks in this world is to give me a chance. And what a country we have built because all people have asked for that chance.
The chief executive officer of the United States Steel Corporation stood up and told some sophisticated college students in New York City this, “Of all the skills you can acquire, the master skill is still hard work”. And I remember what Ted Williams told the newscasters that were assembled together the night before he was inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He said, “Thank you men. You have always publicized my records and achievements, you have always made me look good, and I appreciate that, but let me tell you something. Baseball is discipline, baseball is humility. You follow coaching. Baseball is getting along with the spectators and the fans. Sometimes they are your friends and sometimes they are your foes.. Baseball is inconvenience. Sometimes you have to travel all through the night and all across the nation to get from one town to another.” He summed it by saying, “In the game of baseball, there are no shortcuts.” In the game of being a farmer, a bank executive, a teacher, in a way of being a great citizen in your community, being a leader in your home, being a father or mother, a leader in your civic and school, and church activities, right in the shop, right where you turn the key and walk to your desk – listen folks, there are no shortcuts. There are no easy ways to do difficult jobs. If a man is not willing to realize the effort, the work, the joy of work – of hard work. This is the master skill.
I have a firm conviction that everyone of us can do more than we are doing today. I don’t believe that people are made like assembled parts in an assembly line and put together like an object. And with all the faith and all the zest that I have for the future knowledge of man, I don’t believe that man is going to be smart enough to create another man. Because people are not made or assembled – they are created and there is a big difference. And I can’t help but believe that in the wisdom of the creator that God didn’t put you and I in this world to make mistakes, and to suffer for them. Or to give us tremendous responsibilities and opportunities and then leave us half equipped. God has given to us abilities of mind and body greater than we could ever dream.
I believe man has no limits. I believe there are no limits to what we can do because there is a virtue of endurance in every man which is the gift of God. I know you read the story many times in the Old Testament in the Book of Psalms about the order of creation that tells how God made all the wonders of our world, the beauty of the mountains and the streams and the valleys and the genius of the animal and bird life. Then it says God made man, and this is you and I. And listen, God made man just a little less than God himself. Why? Because man should have dominion, man should manage, man should control all the things which God has created. And ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe that God has turned us loose half equipped. If we are paralysed, we are paralysed in our mind, and our thinking and our doing and our reaching. It is not because we are inadequate.
If we can release in our mind today that I am going to do more and the more I do, the happier I feel. Today I am going to have a dream and the birth of a new idea, and I am going to have the courage to get started and I am going to put in all the effort and I am going to pay the price and I am going to be willing to work at it. The interesting thing you will find is that you have within every sincere beginning, the virtue of endurance, the quality to finish, the quality to make good – this is the gift of God to you.
The late Dag Hammarskjold had a wonderful picture story about climbing mountains. He said, “When you climb a mountain, don’t stand down in the valley and look up at that mountain. The size and height will scare you every time. If you want to climb that mountain, if you want to tackle that project, if you want to work on that dream, if this is the mountain you want to climb, start climbing it. Start crawling and walking and slipping backwards, but only grabbing on long enough to pull yourself forward and hang onto the sagebrush and the limbs and the rough rocks and scratch and bleed and work. When you are tired and one day you are at the top and you look down, you see how small that mountain was.” God give me hills to climb and strength to climb them. Ladies and Gentlemen, if you have lost that, what is there in life?
There are so many people that are walking in this world dead – dead men walking in shoes. They have no life because they can’t discover a new hill to climb and find within themselves a resource for climbing.
There is a man who has changed my whole life and my whole way of thinking, and he lived over 100 years ago out in New England in this great nation of America. When a man by the name of Phillip Brooks stood up before his people 100 years ago before there were computers and electric knives and electric shavers and radial tires, he told these people in primitive America, “Do not pray for easier lives – pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for jobs and tasks equal to your powers, but pray for power equal to your jobs and opportunities, then the dream of your work will be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.”
I am convinced that using these thoughts will make a tremendous difference in the direction and destiny of your lives if you can say to yourself and mean it and believe it. You will go out this year and say, “I will not wish and I will not pray and I will not work for an easier way of life, but I will wish and I will work and I will pray to become a stronger person.” Then this is the profile of achievement. This is your ladder of accomplishment. This is your whole world of a possibility – listing every idea on top of a mountain, climbing every mountain, and forging every stream and following every rainbow, until with the power of God, you find your dream!
The message was re-typed exactly as Dad wrote it, with the exception of ALL CAPS and bolded sections.
