Preface for why Charles Fleisher was motivated to write The Secret of Difficulties page #1
I proudly come from a resilient, middle class, ordinary family. We are, to the man-and woman-average blue-collar workers: nurses, train engineers, FedEx employees, small-business entrepreneurs, cable company employees, teachers, and housewives. We have no senators, congressmen, doctors, professors, or lawyers in the family. Only a handful of my family members have received a bachelors degree or higher. What we do have, though, is an incredible ability to refuse to get knocked down.
Like many of his generation, my grandfather emerged from the ravages of the Great Depression and World War II stronger. He and four of his brothers worked as ironworkers constructing buildings and bridges throughout New York City. My grandfather was the shop foreman for the crew that put the television antenna on top of the Empire State Building. They all brought their families into the thriving middle class of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
After my mother and father separated when I was twelve, I watched my mother go back to school. She left at 6:00 a.m. and was in classes from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Friday night she would leave for work at 10:00 p.m. and work two double shifts. Mom would try to get some sleep the following afternoon. At 10:00 p.m. she would leave again, go back to work overnight, and stay an additional sixteen hours. She continued this routine until she finished her nursing degree and graduated. She accomplished this with a divorce pending and three teenagers with their hordes of friends running around the house.
I also watched my brother Christopher refuse to get beaten down by two diseases. As a young boy he was diagnosed with Perthes disease, a rare bone disease in the legs that leaves many permanently disabled. With the help of excellent doctors and hard work, he was able to achieve full recovery and went on to participate in multiple sports and become an all-star soccer player.
At age nineteen, when he tried to enlist in the Air Force, the doctor found a spot on his lung. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Because of the Air Force X-ray the cancer was caught early at a very treatable stage. Over the course of the next year, I watched him lose 30 pounds, and much of his hair, as a result of radiation therapy. He survived healthy and strong and immediately went back to school for a year and became an air-conditioning and heating technician.
The secret to overcoming difficulties is to find opportunities within them. The difficult situation surrounding my mother’s separation and pending divorce pushed her to pursue a nursing career. After being picked on for his disability as a child, my brother became more assertive. The difficulty of being rejected for having a spot on his lung provided an opportunity to get early treatment for cancer and go back to school.
