Per Ardua ad Astra
(Through Hardship to the Stars)

It is not ease, but effort, not facility, but difficulty which makes a man what he is.

According to an English scholar, Ian Nash, who spent eleven years in Japan making a detailed study of the language and the 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. In his book, The Story of Japan, he explains that 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 led to the ultimate defeat of Japan in the Second World War in 1945.

One might imagine that any country which has been dealt with 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 also shown 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 makes a man what he is.