Two Bits – October 18, 2013

Motorists gently steaming in frustration in the early morning traffic jam in Ballito Drive  last week were pleasantly surprised when staff of the BP express shop went down the road handing out smiles, copies of the Courier and fresh muffins.
Last week I wrote about how the chamber of commerce’s Entrepreneur competition was intended to reward startup businesses that created jobs, and it was a nice coincidence that a local business demonstrated how they can grow, or at least sustain, their business by grasping an opportunity to create goodwill.
You’ve probably never heard of Orison Marden, but he once said this: “Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”
Marden was a 19th Century American whose mother died when he was two. He was left in the care of his father, a hunter and trapper. His father was killed when he was only seven and he was put to work for a number of foster families.
Inspired by a self-help book he found in an attic, he set out to improve himself, qualifying first as a doctor and then a lawyer.
Marden supported himself during his university years by working in a hotel and afterwards became the owner of several hotels. He lost everything in the deep depression of the 1890s. With little money, but with lots of time on his hands, he decided to write a book. He took a room above a stable and worked night and day.
The evening he finished the final page, tired and hungry, he decided to go out to a café for dinner. While he was out, the stable caught fire and burned to the ground. His entire manuscript – more than 1,000 pages, an entire year’s work – was destroyed.
He was overwhelmed and heartbroken. But he picked himself up and started all over again. A year later, he had re-written his manuscript. He then tried to get it published. But with the depression being in its third year, no one was interested.
He moved to Chicago, found a job and met someone who happened to know a publisher. The publisher read his book and said, “This is exactly what people should be reading in the middle of the depression or at any other time”.
“Pushing to the Front” became a runaway classic in the history of personal development books at that time. People like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and J.P. Morgan cited it as inspiration. Marden went on to write more than twenty other inspirational books.
And in the words of Edison, the man who invented the electric light bulb, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
In other words, when opportunity knocks you have to get off your backside and answer the door!
* * *
Gatiep and Maraai are in court getting a divorce. The problem being who should get custody of the child. Maraai jumped up and said:
“Haai your Honour, I brought the child into the world with pain and labour. She should be in my custody!”
The judge turns to Gatiep and says: “Gatiep, what do you have to say in your defence?”
Gatiep sat for a while contemplating. Then slowly rose.
“Jour Honour, answer me this, if I puts a Rand in the vending machine and a Coke comes out, whose Coke is it, the machine’s or mine?