According to an English scholar, Ian Nash, who
spent eleven years in Japan making a detailed study
of the language and nation, what shook the
Japanese most profoundly was not upheavals in
politics, but the great Kanto earthquake, which
devastated the whole of the most populated eastern
part of Japan on the first of September, 1923.
Another terrible blow was the reduction of two of
the great cities of Japan to smouldering mounds of
waste by the dropping of atomic bombs. This lead
to the ultimate defeat of Japan in the Second World
War in 1945.
One might imagine that any country which has
been dealt such shattering blows would never be
able to rise again from its ashes. But this is far from
being true, for Japan has not only rehabilitated
itself, but now figures most prominently of all on
the world commercial and industrial scene. Japan
has become a great hive of technological activity in
spite of having launched itself on an industrial
course long after Britain, Europe and America. This
is all the more remarkable, considering that Japan
has none of the natural resources that the older
established industrial nations have, buried right
there in their own soil just waiting to be extracted.
In man’s life the most important thing is the will to
act. Had the Japanese succumbed to a sense of loss
and frustration, and frittered their energies away in
futile political protest, their country would have
been doomed to decline and ruination. But, as it
was, they conquered any sense of victimization they
might have had and set about reconstructing their
national life with a will and a way. Although
earthquakes had brought them death and
destruction, they had also galvanized them into
building their lives afresh.
In such situations of grim affliction, provided one
has the will, all one’s hidden potential and latent
faculties are brought into play. One can think better,
plan more successfully and make the greater efforts
needed to bring one’s plans to fruition. One who
lacks the will to improve his life is just like an idling
motor which is going nowhere.
Experience has shown also that complacency and a
sense of comfort can be even greater vitiating
factors in man’s progress through life than
devastation and despair. This does not mean that
adversity by itself is beneficial. No. It is simply the
spark which ignites the fuel of man’s soul and
drives him on to greater things. It is the mainspring
of his initiative and the force which propels him
relentlessly forward. In the face of adversity his
hidden capacities come to the fore and it is possible
for him to reach undreamt of heights. But first and
foremost there has to be the will to do so. There has
to be the will to stop wallowing in self-pity and to
get up and take action.
It is not ease, but effort, not facility, but difficulty
which make a man what he is.
--Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
( Ref - The Moral Vision)
