On Facing Obstacles

Objectivity is the way.

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

- Marcus Aurelius

When Malcolm X was arrested for burglary at the age of twenty, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. His life was over before it was getting started, or at least it seemed so.

In prison, he had more time on his hands than he knew how to use, so he engaged in reading, writing, and studying. He lacked penmanship, so he copied an entire dictionary. He built a routine of reading all day and all night, including the works of Elijah Muhammad, Socrates, Gandhi, and W.E.B. Dubois. It was a time of self-reflection and self-transformation.

When he was released, he was not only self-educated but well-educated, and ready to fight racial injustice and put a dent in this world. He spoke across the world, fighting for the rights of his brothers and sisters. But such an act was only possible because of how he spent time using the darkness to create some light. He viewed what he was going through not as a burden, but as an opportunity. He didn’t perceive his arrest as the end of the world because it was the start of something new — something that would turn out to be special.