Photo of square in front of St Paul’s Church, Halifax , Nova Scotia
Sales Man Up
Defining Moments
A defining moment takes a long time to get over, if you ever do. - Mick Jones
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
-Charles R. Swindoll
It was a brisk December morning in Halifax Nova Scotia. The year was 1917. The Norwegian vessel SS Imo was cruising through The Narrows- a strait connecting the Halifax Harbor to the Bedford Basin - when the unthinkable happened. The SS Imo collided with another vessel, The SS Mont-Blanc. Unfortunately, to the demise of many, the SS Mont-Blanc was laden to the gills with TNT and Nitroglycerin. As a result of the collision, a fire broke out on the French ship which ignited the cargo.
You know what happened next - an explosion of historic proportions equivalent to the release of nearly 2.9 kilotons of TNT ! Over 2000 people within the vicinity of the ships were killed and several thousands injured - many blinded or visually impaired by the blast and scattered debris. ( Wikipedia ) The anchor of one of the ships was literally launched over seven kilometers from the site of the collision . A little girl skipping down the hill to meet her family in the harbor was blown back up the hill… and lived. St. Paul’s Church in Halifax, the oldest Anglican Church outside of England, had all but one of their stained glass windows shattered ; and received a lasting memento of this occasion in the form of a long steel rod that impaled the front vestibule of the church. My wife and I had occasion to visit this church and saw the plaque just below the protruding rod, stating, “ Relic of the Explosion, Dec. 6, 1917. “ This, my friends, was a defining moment for the city of Halifax. Even one hundred years later, the Great Explosion is spoken of as if it happened this year.
We all experience defining moments. They might not be on the caliber of a munitions ship exploding in our city , but the impact can feel the same. A parent or close friend passes away. A marriage dissolves. An adult child goes away to college, gets married; or maybe our baby starts their first day of kindergarten or preschool. We might not always recognize the gravity of these high points or low points when they occur, but they mark us. Maybe our company is purchased by another larger corporation, and the corporate culture and values that we once knew and held dear have now changed. An economic downturn occurs in our market and cuts your business in half. These are defining moments too. They mark us. They leave a deep impact on each of us.
The root meaning for the word “character” means to be “ marked or etched” . A person with deep character has usually experienced a lot of challenges in life that have affected them. Experiences can make us bitter or make us better. The choice is ours. We cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we handle that defining moment, and how we respond to it. As a famous writer, psychologist, and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl concluded, “ Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” What attitude will we choose within our defining moments ? The community of Halifax chose to move forward and has become a beautiful port city filled with resilient people who are descendants of a horrendous event in history. May the moments that define you make you a better person with character that runs deep like a river in your soul. Live strong.
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.' - Viktor E. Frankl
