Discovery, Part Two

Did you know that today, October 9th, is Leif Erikson Day?

According to Wikipedia…

Leif Erikson Day is an annual American observance which occurs on October 9. It honors Leif Ericson (Old Norse: Leifr Eiríksson or the Norwegian: “Leiv Eiriksson”), the Norse explorer who brought the first Europeans known to have set foot in North America.

Who knew?

But it is true.  Old Leif apparently arrived in the New World around 100 AD, nearly five hundred years before Christopher Columbus’ claims at discovery.

Yesterday, I wrote about the idea of discovery and about uncovering the potential that lies within every one of us.

As a continuation of that idea, I have been thinking about poor Leif Erikson, the also-ran where discovery of North America and October holidays are concerned.  While historical accounts differ and some of the specific details of Leif’s North American landing are shrouded in uncertainty, the general belief is that he did indeed precede Columbus here in the New World.

So why doesn’t Leif Erikson –and his holiday – get the same attention as Columbus?  Maybe Columbus made more of an effort to get the word out there.  Just look at the journals of his voyages – clearly intended for an audience and clearly written to make him look good.  Maybe he just had a better press agent.

The question still remains: why do some people end up getting more attention for their efforts than others?  Perhaps it is about motivation.  Maybe Erikson took his voyage for the love of the quest and the excitement of discovery.  Maybe Columbus was motivated by financial success and social standing.  We cannot possibly know unless we dig them up from their respective resting places and ask them.  And so we can only speculate and may never know.

It is also true that we may never know why one or another of us succeeds or fails at any particular task.  We may never know why one person’s achievements are lauded while another’s go seemingly unnoticed.  Time spent fretting over these questions is time not wisely spent.  There is much more we could do with that time…

If we are to grow, to learn, to reach our fullest potential, we must make our Self our first and foremost concern.  Emerson knew this.  In “Self-Reliance,” he said,

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

Thoreau knew it as well.  In the “Conclusion” to his Walden, he wrote:

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?”

Each of us attempts, stumbles, fails or succeeds, and matures in our own time.  And if our efforts are seemingly unnoticed or unappreciated, perhaps it is not our moment to be noticed.  Perhaps we have done something sooner, better, or faster than another but we remain quietly in the background.

It does not change who we are.  It does not change what we have accomplished.

If Columbus got the bigger dose of attention for setting foot on the soil of the New World does not necessarily mean he was the first to do so.  If Erikson got the lesser, it does not change the fact that he was.  And none of it changes the fact that each man – in his own time – accomplished something great.

So here’s to the so-called also-rans, the second-bananas, the runners-up…who may just be the leaders in the first place.