MANY decades ago, on long train journeys, my father would take me to the end of the long platform and show me the mighty steam engine which pulled us. “Do you know how it works Bob?” he asked once. I shook my head, “Pressure!” he said.
“The steam builds up such pressure inside the turbine that it pushes those wheels which pull the train and gets all of us from one place to another. Imagine how well pressure is put to work, to make it a success!” But there are many who instead of using pressure successfully break under it.
How do you cope with the pressures of everyday life, the demands and difficulties we confront during the course of a typical workday? There’s a saying, “Life would not be so bad if it were not for the people.” A corollary statement to that might be, “Work would not be so bad if it were not for the pressures.” I remember reading the amazing story about Ervin Nyiregyhazi, Hungarian by birth. At the age of two, Ervin was picking out tunes on his little toy piano. At three he had demonstrated perfect pitch, and at the age of four was already writing his own musical compositions.
Ervin played with the Berlin Symphony at the age of 12; at 15 he performed before the King and Queen of Norway, and at 17 made an appearance in historic Carnegie Hall in New York City, U.S.A. Some leading authorities in the world of music had already begun comparing him with Mozart.
Then, in his early twenties, Ervin mysteriously disappeared from sight. It was as if he had fallen off the face of the earth! For years, no one knew what had become of this marvelous, one-time musical prodigy. At age 75, he reappeared in San Francisco, California, destitute, living in a cheap hotel, performing a free concert in a small, out-of-way church building.
“What happened to Ervin?” you ask. He simply could not handle the pressures of daily life. The pressure of marriage and relationships; the emotional tension of the music world; the sheer weight of success and fame. They all took a mental and emotional toll, causing him to “drop out!” Imagine a wasted life just because he hadn’t learnt to handle pressure!
And from where do we handle pressure? From a deep stillness! You can do all the external mental exercises the world talks about, but unless you are linked to the Stillness above, you will burst under stress and hide like Ervin Nyiregyhazi. Just like the steam engine of yore, we need pressure to get us to places, to propel us forward and upward. So let your pressure link itself to the ‘Be Still’ available for you and me and go full steam ahead..!
