Opinion

How to be a self-made success

By John Gathright

"I am a self-made success. I have done it all by myself, and so can you! You don't need to depend on anyone in your life, just what I will teach you tonight." Wow, what a powerful opening line.

But a red flag went up in my mind: This guy is a fraud, a multimillionaire fraud! How can anyone say they became a success all by themselves? Someone had to have born and raised him. He didn't come to Japan all by himself: Someone flew the plane and someone picked him up at the airport. Someone is translating for him and we all paid to hear him speak.

My thoughts started racing: It is impossible to depend on nothing and no one. We depend on millions of people everyday. And what about nature? We all depend on trees for oxygen. How can you succeed if you fail to appreciate that?

He was an animated, powerful speaker, and I was getting very excited listening to his speech as he ranted and raved from the top of his soap box.

"Don't think like the little guy. Think big, act big! Don't look back! Up, up, up!"

I then remembered the story of Charles Plum and his parachute. Charles Plum, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He was captured on his 76th combat mission, after parachuting from his plane, which was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. He survived six years as a prisoner-of-war, and now lectures on what he learned from the experience.

One day, when Plum and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man came up to him and said, "You're Plum! You flew fighters in Vietnam from the Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"

"How in the world did you know that?" Plum asked.

"I packed your parachute," the man said. "I guess it worked!"

Plum was stunned, and overwhelmed with gratitude, he replied, "It sure did. If your 'chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."

Plum later said, "Afterward, I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform. I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said good morning, how are you or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor."

Plum thought of the hours the sailor had spent preparing each parachute and how, with each parachute, the sailor held in his hands the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now, Plum asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?" Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

The businessman's speech had given me food for thought. Like Plum, I was left wondering how many people had I not noticed or thanked in my life. Sometimes success can breed selective amnesia but it takes many people to become a "self-made" person.

Shukan ST: May 17, 2002

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