I am of the generation where I can remember my mother talking about what she witnessed as a child during the Great Depression. These were stories of how circumstances brought grown men and women to tears or even worse. The nineteen thirties are a long way back in time and we as Americans have come to believe that we have moved beyond such calamities and yet the current financial crisis has begun to shatter that assumption.
Despite my Mother’s stories, as a history major in college, I came to learn that there were people who managed to survive the upheaval of the depression, and some who even thrived. These were the people who realized that in chaos there is opportunity. Now don’t get me wrong, these were difficult times, but this sheer difficulty forced these people to think in different ways. They had to look beyond their current circumstances, to make themselves’ more attuned to a need, an opening, or a situation that they had noticed and how to take advantage of it.
As humans, we are creatures of habit. We want to do things the way we have always done them and resist things that are beyond our usual habit. Yet little do we realize that these upheavals come along to force us to see roads and avenues that we would never consider. During times of upset things that used to be road blocks break down and we have to be willing to see these new roads and open doors.
Take the case of Madam C.J. Walker who became the first self-made Afro-American millionaire. Her parents had been slaves and she was the first member of her family to be born free. It was a time of great upheaval where freed slaves had to learn to fend for themselves in a society that was not that welcoming or supportive. She first became active in her local church which helped to develop speaking and organizational skills. And then, in response to the problem of losing her hair, began to develop her own hair care products.
She took in laundry to get money to develop her business and mixed her preparations in those same laundry tubs to then sell them door-to-door. Later she noticed other black women who needed employment and hired them as commission salespeople which expanded her business ten-fold. And the rest, as they say is history.
Or, the example of scientist Alexander Fleming. He was working on a major bacteria experiment that would continue his funding but was careless in preparing his culture dishes. He set up his experiment and then went on vacation to allow the culture to set. Once he returned he noticed that a fungus had killed the bacteria he was attempting to grow. He was depressed and ready to give up when he realized the fungus had killed the bacteria he was attempting to grow. That fungus was Penicillin.
Or finally, the case of Zhang Yin who is now the richest woman in China. The eldest of eight children in a poor soldier’s family in northeast China she started a small scrap paper company to make ends meet.
She began just as the export boom was coming to China and the social support network had fallen away for most Chinese. She saved any extra money the company made to put toward buying a large processing machine for the business. “Foresight is the key,” says Zhang. “While most domestic producers were using machines with a production capacity of less than 50,000 tons, our first machine had a capacity of 200,000 tons. We set higher goals.” She bought scrap paper that no one wanted and saw her company grow as demand for Chinese exports grew. She later took her company public and is now wealthier than Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series.