LABOUR OF A LIFETIME
Motivation
HELEN HOOVEN SANTMYER was an American writer, educator and librarian. She is primarily known for her best-selling epic, And the Ladies of the Club, published when she was in her eighties. The following is one of the incidents in Helen Hooven Santmyer’s life (1895-1986) which can inspire us and motivate us in our lives.
At one point of time in her life, while working as a librarian in a reference section, she started to write a book. At first she worked on it in her spare time. Then, ill health forced her to retire. She continued her work in the nursing home where she was hospitalized. She wrote the whole book out herself, in long hand, on a ledger. After completing her work she presented it to the Ohio State University Press for publication. The final manuscript filled eleven boxes. A handful of copies were printed, but the book met with no initial success. It seemed as if Helen Hooven Santmyer’s name would vanish without trace from the American literary scene.
Then one person who bought the book read it and liked it. He was praising it in an Ohio library one day, when the librarian overheard his conversation. The word was passed on to a producer, then to an agent, and then to the American Book Club. Each party found the book entrancing and worthy of a greater audience.
Finally, Helen Hooven Santmyer’s book entitled “And Ladies of the Club”, was nominated for the Book Club Award. It won the award, and with it a sum of over a million dollars.
Strong belief in something makes one rise above one's worldly situation. It makes one concentrate on one's goals in life.
Helen Hooven Santmyer did not seek fame or wealth from her novel. Its topic—the story of two Ohio families in the period between the American Civil War and the great depression of the early 1930’s, was obviously not aimed at the commercial market. The author believed that Sinclair Lewis had painted a false portrait of the American dream in his novel of the 1920’s “Main Street”. She wanted to correct that picture, as Haynes Johnson writes in the Washington Post.
The author was clearly not in the market for big bucks. She obviously was motivated by saying something which she believed. The bare account of how she produced the work over the years, in her spare time, in sickness and in health, in itself provides an astonishing testament of her perseverance.
Strong belief in something makes one rise above one’s worldly situation. It makes one concentrate on one’s goals in life. No matter what hindrances and obstacles lie on the path, one soldiers on until one reaches the final destination.
The believer labours all his life for the attainment of reward in the Hereafter.
The conviction that spurs a true believer on, is faith in the life to come. He bears all forms of hardships, suffering and adversity in this world. He realizes that this ephemeral world is for the trial of man; in the next eternal world of God he will be rewarded for his efforts. As Helen Hoover laboured for over half a century in the compilation of her book bearing all forms of adversity in her determination to attain her goal in life, so the believer labours all his life for the attainment of reward in the Hereafter. And, as her sustained efforts bore her due reward in this world, so the believer’s sustained effort will bear him due reward in the next world: he will be made to enter a Paradise of eternal repose and bliss.
One has attained a superior
moral status when one becomes
indifferent to praise or blame and
when his opinion of others does not
depend upon whether they agree or
disagree with him.