The Best Advice I Ever Had

IT WAS A NEIGHBOUR of ours in Warsaw who, when I was nine years old, spoke the words which have meant more to me than any other advice I have ever had. My mother had been ill for a long time and it was uncertain whether she would live. I was sobbing bitterly outside our front door.

- Samuel Goldwyn

Our neighbour, an old man who wore his years with dignity, put an arm around me, quietened my sobbing and said: “Remember, Samuel, a man’s most precious possession is his courage. No matter how black things seem, if you have courage, darkness can be overcome.”

Those two simple sentences made a profound impression on me, young as I was. From that moment on, I was able to face my mother’s illness determined that my courage would be of help to her in her struggle to live. Perhaps in some small part it was a help, for her health was eventually restored.

A few years later I was in Hamburg, a boy alone, intent on reaching America. The little money with which I had left home had run out and, sleeping in the streets, I was cold, hungry, miserable. There seemed to be no alternative except to turn back to Warsaw and give up my dream of America. But then there came to me one night the memory of that kindly old man saying, “No matter how black things seem … darkness can be overcome.” I resolved to stick it out, no matter what happened.

The resolution did nothing for the aching void in my stomach, but it did keep me from leaving Hamburg. And a day later, something led me to the shop of a former Warsaw neighbour. The ex-neighbour took me in, fed me and raised enough money among his friends to book me steerage for an ocean crossing. Was this, perhaps, the first dividend on “a man’s most precious possession”?

THERE WERE MANY