The Element, writes Sir Ken Robinson, is the place where two things meet: (1) doing something you love and (2) being good at it. However, he adds that these two are not enough.
“Getting to the Element depends primarily on our view of ourselves and the events in our lives. The Element is also a matter of attitude.”
There are people with talents who practice them with pleasure, yet never achieve significant success; the activity remains on the periphery of their lives. It becomes clear that the condition for success is not the gift itself, but something else—that specific attitude which Ken Robinson describes as the core of the Element, and which I call passion.
And because things are best understood through examples, here is a story from this very interesting book, The Element. It is about John Wilson, a man whose work changed the lives of millions.
At the age of 12, young John was blinded by an accident in a chemistry class. Instead of water, a container used for an experiment held a liquid that exploded. As a result of the explosion, many of the children were seriously injured, the classroom walls were destroyed, and John himself—who was closest and supposed to conduct the experiment—lost his sight. By any standard of luck or fate, we could define this as a human tragedy. But not according to John Wilson himself, who years later told the London Times: “Even then, I didn’t take it as a catastrophe.”
Instead, he continued his education at a school for blind children and later graduated in Law from Oxford. Even then, his uniqueness was evident—while studying at Oxford, he moved around using only his keen sense of hearing and his “sense of obstacles” instead of a white cane. After graduating, he began working for the National Institute for the Blind.
It was then that his Element began to manifest.
“In 1946, he went on a tour of British territories in Africa and the Middle East, where he discovered widespread blindness. And unlike the accident in which he himself lost his sight, the diseases claiming people’s vision there could be prevented with the right treatment. For Wilson, it was one thing to accept his own fate, but quite another to allow something to continue that could be fixed relatively easily. This challenged him to act…”
That action involved writing a report. This led to the formation of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, which Wilson led for over 30 years, and its work was spectacular.
In 1950, he and his wife lived in a hut in a region of Ghana called “the country of the blind,” because a disease caused by biting insects led to sight loss among 10 percent of the population. His team worked to develop a preventive treatment for the disease known as river blindness. The organization vaccinated children with Mectizan in seven African countries where the disease was most prevalent and eventually eradicated it. By the early 1960s, river blindness was under control. It would be no exaggeration to say that generations of African children can thank John Wilson for the fact that they can see.
Under Wilson’s management, the organization performed over 3 million cataract operations and treated 12 million people at risk of losing their sight. More than 100 million doses of Vitamin A were distributed to reduce childhood blindness, and textbooks for the blind were provided to the populations of Africa and Asia. We can summarize that tens of millions of people can see thanks to John Wilson’s dedication to his work and his determination to prevent the preventable. His commitment continued even after he retired, when he and his wife worked with a World Health Organization program to prevent all types of diseases that lead to disability.
For his work, John Wilson received the support of his peers and great recognition, his deeds being compared to those of Mother Teresa.
“In 1975, he was knighted, and he received the Helen Keller International Award, the Albert Schweitzer International Prize, and the World Humanitarian Award.”
I don’t like transcribing long quotes from books, but I did it this time because this story impressed and inspired me so much. A young boy loses his sight at age 12 and, instead of being filled with bitterness and resentment toward an unjust fate, he ensures that others can see. Millions of others! And this work continued throughout his life, until the very end.
“Until his death in 1999, he continued to actively participate in the fight to prevent blindness and all treatable diseases.”
For me, this is Spiritual Intelligence in action. When you have a strong spirit, it doesn’t matter what happens to you, because you always have the freedom to choose what to turn it into. And you always choose for your gift to be in service to others.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
All quotes are from “The Element” by Sir Ken Robinson.
