Where You Are and Your Background Have Nothing to do With How Far You Can Go in Life

Excerps From Rene Godefroy Best-selling
book No Condition is Permanent

"Years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

Many people believe one of the myths of success: that in order to achieve anything significant in life one must come from a background full of resources. There are those who look at where they are in life and conclude that it’s impossible to make it to the top. Have you met people like this, those who blame their failure on their past?

Somewhere in their subconscious they believe their past (where they started in life) is the reason they are barely surviving today. This is far from the truth. When I look at how far I have come to be where I am today, I can’t help thinking that you and I have more inside us than we could ever imagine.

Against All Odds
I was born in extreme poverty in a tiny village in Haiti. Haiti is located south of Florida, with the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south. While not all people on the island are poor, the people in my village certainly were. The village is about two miles long and one mile wide. It is located on the extreme southside in the backwoods of Haiti.

We had no running water, no plumbing, and no electricity. We didn’t have access to medical care. I still remember the first time I saw lights. They were the headlights of an old and battered truck they called Voici Phane (vwah-see fahn), which means here is Phane…the truck owner’s name.

Things were difficult in my village. By the time I was five or six years old, I was walking long distances on narrow and dangerous pathways to collect drinking water from a wellspring, and to fetch wood for cooking. I started climbing coconut and mango trees for survival. As a little boy, I remember using my hands to eat because we had no silverware.

For plates, we used half calabashes, which are like big watermelons grown out of a tree (except they are not edible). The folks would cut them in half, clean out the inside, and let them dry in the sun so that they would become the consistency of wood.

Every child in my village was poor; but I was worse off—most of them had at least one parent present. When I became aware of my surroundings, I realized I didn’t have my father or mother around me. My father, who was no help to me, had children all over Haiti.

He traveled from very far to take advantage of young, innocent women; and he abandoned Maman while she was still pregnant with me. I learned that my mother left me when I was only nine months old. The neighbors told me Maman suffered very much because she was so poor.

One morning she decided to venture to the city, Port-au-Prince, to discover what life had in store for her—and to end a lifetime of poverty. She left me behind with a lady named Betila. They told me Maman had planned to send for me as soon as she could, but life in the city was tough and things didn’t turn out the way she expected. It would be a long time before she could send for me.

As soon as Maman took off, I became ill. Many deadly diseases vowed to end my existence so much so that I often lost all my strength. My unhealthy diet, which mostly consisted of breadfruit, added to my misery. Do you know what breadfruit is? It looks like pineapples on the outside but tastes like extra tough potatoes.

My already weak digestive system could not process this much starch; but since I survived by eating breadfruit night and day, my stomach was always bloated. I had constant indigestion, and parasites were eating me alive.

I wanted to give up many times because my body was so weak, but my spirit refused to do so. It wanted me to stay in the ring and fight one more battle. I spent most of my time during the day sitting on a dirt floor fanning flies off my face; and at night, I shooed away the mosquitoes. I was so alone. There were times when I wondered whether I had been brought to this earth by a spirit who had then abandoned me.

Every day I cried for my mother’s help. I heard that I had a sister and a brother in the City with Maman. I wanted to be close to my family. Perhaps then I could be touched, even held. Psychologists tell us that children who are not cuddled, held, and touched have a tendency to shrink and die early. I desperately needed some type of affection.
_______________________________________________
This is an excerpt from Rene Godefroy's Book No Condition is Permanent . Top movers and shakers like Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown, Charlie Tremendous Jones, Jeffrey Gitomer, W Mitchel and Nido Qubein highly endorse this book. Click on this link to learn more about this book motivational book or click on this link motivational speaker & keynote speaker