- Life is hard.
See it's hard when you are 49 years old
been working on a job for 17 years
and they come in and
tell you you're finished
and give you one week's severance pay
and you have to start all over again.
It's hard when you're
married and raising children
and your children are crawling
and your husband dies unexpectedly.
It's hard handling just
the tragedies of life.
It's hard when you're working on something
and, and you put everything you have in it
and it doesn't work
out, you lose your money
and other people's money.
It's hard, it was rough when I lost my job
and I could not find a job.
It was humiliating and
embarrassing borrowing money
and then I couldn't pay the money back
when I told them I would.
That's rough, how people look at you,
how they respond to you,
it's very hard, it's humiliating.
Here's what I discovered
that happens to you in life
that you will go through
things and while you're going
through them you can't understand
why it's happening to 'ya
but after you go through
it and you get back
and you look at it, then you say oh,
now I understand why I needed that lesson.
Have you ever had it happen
to you raise your hand,
did it ever happen to you that,
that I couldn't understand it there
but after I got through it then I saw
that that was preparing me
for bigger and better things.
As you go through the challenges of life
and you look at it and
embrace whatever comes to you
don't run from it, step toward it.
Don't try and duck it like most people do.
See most people want it
easy, see if you easy come,
easy what, easy go, see but when you go at
what you're going to deal with
and you deal with the difficulties of it,
when you handle those
hard things close at hand,
making those hard decisions right now
that you don't wanna make,
learning those things
that you don't like to do, but you know
that in order for you to
get where you wanna go,
this is one of the hoops that
you have to flip through.
And I'm saying to you
whatever you gotta do, do it,
because if you don't
life is gonna whoop you
until you surrender, and say, okay,
alright, alright, alright, alright,
I'll cooperate, okay I'll learn, okay,
he had to wear me out a long time.
So I've been taught then do it hard.
Now how do you hang in there
during the hard difficult times
lest you must have faith.
You've gotta believe in yourself.
You've got to believe in your abilities.
You've got to believe in
your service, your company,
your ideas, unquestionably.
You've got to have faith and
that faith gives you patience
that is not gonna happen as quickly
as you want it to happen.
A lot of things gonna happen
that will catch you off guard
and so therefore you've got to deal with,
and handle it as it
comes and not only that
but that faith and patience
drives you into action,
you've got to keep moving
and keep plugging away.
In the Far East they have
something that's called,
the Chinese bamboo tree.
The Chinese bamboo tree
takes five years to grow.
They have to water and
fertilize the ground
where it is every day and
it doesn't break through
the ground until the fifth year.
But once it breaks through the ground
within five weeks it grows 90 feet tall.
Now the question is,
does it grow 90 feet tall
in five weeks or five years?
The answer is obvious, it grows
90 feet tall in five years
because at any time
had that person stopped
watering and nurturing
and fertilizing that tree,
that bamboo tree would
have died in the ground.
And I can see people coming
out talking to a guy,
out there watering and
fertilizing the ground
that's not showing anything,
hey, what 'ya doing?
(audience laughing)
You've been out here a long time now,
and the conversation
in the neighborhood is,
you're growing a Chinese
bamboo tree, that right?
(audience laughing)
Yeah, that's right.
Well um, even Ray
Charles and Stevie Wonder
can see there ain't nothin' showing.
(audience laughing and clapping)
You know that's how
people are gonna do you,
so how long you been working on this?
How long have you been
working on your dream,
and you have nothing to show,
this is all you've got to show?
People gonna do that to you.
And some people ladies
and gentlemen they stop
because they don't see instant results,
it doesn't happen quickly,
they stop, oh, no, no, no, no.
You gotta keep on watering your dream
and when it begin to
happen, they stop laughing.
They say, look, whoa,
look here, it's, look up,
hey man, you know, I know you could do it,
look, you got a job here (laughing).
(audience clapping and laughing)
See during those hard times we didn't know
how you're gonna make
payroll during those times
when you fail and things didn't work out,
they were nowhere to be found.
You know what I discovered,
when you're working
at your dream somebody
said, the harder the better,
the sweeter the victory,
oh it's sweet to 'ya.
It's good to 'ya, why?
See when you, when it's
hard and there's a struggle
see what you become in the process
is more important than the dream.
That's far more important.
The kind of person you
become, the character
that you build, the
courage that you develop,
the faith that you're manifesting,
oh, it's something that
you get up in the morning,
you look yourself in the mirror,
you're a different kind of person,
you walk with a different kind of spirit.
People know that you know what life is
that you have embraced
life, you know it was hard,
but you did it hard.
(clapping)
(dramatic music)
