Never should've happened

People's life stories are inspiring.  Sometimes it's a little hard to see what is happening during the hardships life brings, but the bigger picture of a person's life is usually beautiful to see... and inspiring.

I'm thinking of a young mother who was a farmer's wife who got pregnant during a very bad time.  Her country was in civil war, so she lived in fear that one day she would have to choose sides.  But life turned worse than her fears.  After her first trimester of pregnancy, her husband died (but not from the war).  She was alone on the farm.  This stressed her, of course, and she delivered early.  Premature babies didn't normally make it at this time, so she was doubly stressed.

Fortunately, 3 years later, the civil war died down and she was able to find a husband, a rather well-to-do one at that.  But, she left her child with her mother to raise.  In any age, grandmothers raising grandchildren is a struggle at best.  Finally, 9 years later, his grandmother couldn't raise him any longer, so his mother came back into the picture.  She had had 3 children by her second husband by this time, so he joined a family of half brothers who weren't thrilled about his return to their mother.  She immediately enrolled him in school to occupy his time and relieve some of the stress caused in the family by his presence.  But, after a year, she withdrew him in order to make him a farmer and give him a trade.

As it turns out, he was not good at farming, so he failed miserably at this endeavor.  His mother was at wit's end.  Her brother suggested that her son might have a better chance in school, so she enrolled her son again in school.  He graduated and enrolled in Trinity College in Cambridge.  He was only able to this through a work-study program where he cleaned wealthy kids' rooms and waited tables in the cafeteria.  He managed to graduate, but with no distinctions whatever.

Then came the good news/bad news time of his life.  Because of some work he had done outside of the curriculum of school, he was awarded four years of future education.  Unfortuantely, disease on a pandemic scale ravaged his country and town, so the university was shut down.  Looking back, the university was only closed two years, but of course, no one knows that at the time it is happening.  So, he took the next 18 months to sequester himself and study harder than he had ever studied on only the subjects he enjoyed.

One day, while he was deep in thought, sitting outside under a grove of trees in the refreshing air, the wind blew an apple from a branch.  Usually, this is not an exciting, stimulating event.  But, this time...

The boy who was not supposed to survive, who was born in the midst of a civil war, who was taken from school to be a farmer, who graduated undistinguished from college had an epiphany that day the apple fell.  It started his observations about gravity, which turned into a book about infinitesimal calculus, which led to a theory on light and color, which, in turn prompted a book about planetary motion.

Isaac Newton is considered by many, many scientists to be the father of the Scientific Revolution.  I don't know if it was never meant to be, and Newton just had tremendous stamina, or if it was meant to be, and he was the chosen one.  Either way, his story inspires me.

What is around my next corner?  My history mirrors Newton's early life in many ways.  But, an apple hasn't blown off a branch of the tree I have been sitting next to yet.  I am, however, watching the wind dance in the branches and looking forward to whatever the wind blows in.