Facing the Storm Head-On

Let me use a couple of seemingly unrelated clichés that you’ve probably heard to set up a lesson or incident I once heard that made an impact upon my life. This lesson was reinforced not long ago by a wonderful movie I saw about penguins.

The clichés: ‘Into every life some rain must fall or a storm must blow.’ ‘The best way to slay a dragon is to turn and face it and then rush right up to it and plunge a sword down its throat.’

The lesson learned in my youth: A rugged old cowboy who worked one of the cattle ranches of the Northern Rockies explained how the winter storms took some terrible tolls on the range cattle of the region. Freezing winter rains and howling winds and then blizzards would come blowing down from the Arctic and pile up huge snowdrifts. The temperature would sometimes plummet to many degrees below zero. The unfortunate cattle who found themselves caught out in these conditions would often turn their backs to the icy blasts and slowly drift as far as they could downwind, until they inevitably came to a fence that would bar their way. Then they would pile up against the fence and die by the hundreds. However, the cowboy observed that those cattle of the Hereford breed often reacted differently. They would head into the wind and slowly work their way forward against it until they came to the fence at the windward end of their range. There they would stand, shoulder to shoulder, facing the storm. The cowboy said, “We found that the cattle that faced the wind and stayed together usually stayed alive and well. Few of these cattle were ever found frozen in a drift.”

The lesson reinforced by the penguin movie: In the Antarctic the penguins would do essentially the same thing. They would gather in a tight group and face the wind and would periodically change positions so that the penguins who were on the inside, and thus protected and warmer, would take their turn with the outside barrier penguins who stayed for their stint against the elements.

Every experience in life carries its lesson. You may learn it yourself, sometimes the hard way, or you may learn it through the experiences and behaviors of others—people or animals. One way or the other, learn it.