Adversity

Just Another Way to Measure Your Moxie

- Marc Clark

Farmers in the southern state of Alabama were accustomed to planting one crop every year, and that was cotton. They would plow as much ground as they could and plant their crop. Year after year they lived by the cotton harvest. Then one year the dreaded boll weevil (a major pest of the cotton crop) devastated the whole area. So, the next year the farmers mortgaged their homes and planted cotton again, hoping for a good harvest. But as the cotton began to grow, the insect came back and destroyed the crop, wiping our most of the farms.

The few who survived those two years of the boll weevil decided to experiment the third year, so they planted something they’d never planted before, peanuts. And peanuts proved so hardy and the market proved so ravenous for that product that the farmers who survived the first two years reaped profits that third year that enable them to pay off all their debts. They planted peanuts from then on and prospered greatly.

Then you know what those farmers did? They spent some of their new wealth to erect in the town square a monument, to the boll weevil. If it hadn’t been for the boll weevil, they never would have discovered peanuts. They learned that even out of disaster, misfortune, trouble, difficulty and hardship there can be great delight. In some cases, adversity carries with it a silver lining.