My favorite children’s story when I was a kid was the “Little Engine That Could.” I made my mother read that one to me, over and over, until I’m sure she was muttering, “Oh Lord, not again,” when I asked for her to read it “one more time.”
Do you remember it? A little blue engine looked at his impossible task of pulling a train up a steep hill. As he slowly but surely inched up the hill, he kept saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”
And he made it: “I thought I could; I thought I could; I thought I could,” he said at the end of the story.
The book, originally published in 1930, was intended to teach children the value of optimism and hard work. It worked that way for me. In one of her readings, my mom told me that like the little engine, I could excel in anything, if I had determination and positivity.
I believed her.
Wilma Rudolph was a “little engine that could.” Not only was she the 20th of 22 children, but she was also born prematurely and was not a healthy baby. Further, she grew up as a minority in the segregated south during the 1950s. As a child, she had double pneumonia, scarlet fever and polio. As a result, she had problems with her left leg and had to wear a brace. But little Wilma was determined to walk, and with great fortitude and the help of physical therapy, she was able to overcome her disabilities.
“My doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother,” Wilma later said.
It worked pretty well for her: In 1960, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics.
Of course, life also teaches us that positive thinking doesn’t exempt us from planning and hard work. Shel Silverstein played on the story of “The Little Engine that Could,” and in so doing reminded children (and adults) that we must foresee obstacles and be prepared for the difficult journey that lies ahead. The last two stanzas of his, “The Little Blue Engine,” go like this:
“With a squeak and a creak and a toot and a sigh,
With an extra hope and an extra try,
He would not stop — now he neared the top —
And strong and proud he cried out loud,
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!”
“He was almost there, when — CRASH! SMASH! BASH!
He slid down and mashed into engine hash
On the rocks below… which goes to show
If the track is tough and the hill is rough,
THINKING you can just ain’t enough!”
Shel was right, of course. Positive thinking in itself will not get you up the hill, but I will still latch onto that hopeful confidence that keeps the strugglers on the trail traveling upwards rather than squatting in despair. As Zig Ziglar put it, “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”
Wilma Rudolph apparently got that. She didn’t hide in a cocoon of wishful thinking. Her journey from life bound by braces to the Olympic medal stand required grit and determination, one step at a time. Referring to her mother, Wilma said, “My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.”
Our world seems inundated with negativism that pounds us with its message: We’re strapped by the powers that rule; we’re hopelessly stuck where we are; nothing works for people like us.
Besides that, there’s the daily grind: Johnny brought home a bad report card; little Lisa’s got strep; the washing machine is on the blink; the dog just messed on the carpet.
It’s in times like those that the words of Watty Piper, author of “The Little Engine That Could,” still speak, even to adults, and marvelously better than the negativity that constantly plagues our daily lives.
I, for one, choose to hitch a ride on the “Little Engine That Could.” With his attitude, and the drive to keep going, I believe we have at least a fighting chance of getting there. And if we “CRASH! SMASH! BASH!” at least our faces will have been looking up and not down the hill.