Resourcefulness: the sine qua non of Comeback

I heard Dr. Norman Vincent Peale speak to a national convention some 40 years ago.  He told this story:

I have a friend in New York City. He was just exactly 16 years old last spring when the school vacation time came along. So he went to his father (who is a friend of mine) and said, "I don't want to sponge off you all summer long, I want to get a job and have some cash of my own."

After the father had recovered from his shock he said, "Well son, that is a laudable ambition, but I have to tell you that the job opportunities in the metropolitan area are practically nil. You couldn't get a job for love nor money."

The boy said, "Dad, you are speaking like a negative thinker. Now I am a positive thinker, and I know that there's a job available for me this summertime."

So the boy got out a copy of the newspaper and he looked for want ads. One caught his eye. It said: "WANTED, a boy, 16, alert, willing to work, ambitious, creative. Show up at a certain address on 42nd Street tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and be prompt."

He was down there the next morning not at 8:00. Certainly not at 8:15. He was there at 7:45, only to find that there were 20 boys lined up leading to the secretary of the man doing the hiring, which made him the 21st kid in line. He looked these boys all over and had to admit they were good boys, and if he were the boss, he'd be willing to hire any one of them, but he did not want any of them to be hired.

He was a competitor . . . part of the greatest economic system in the history of the world: the American free enterprise system. This was his competition . . . how to get over the heads of 20 boys, sell himself to the boss, and get the job.

I said, "What did you do?" He said, "1 went into the most painful process known to man. I thought. And I prayed." And he added, "Prayer is a form of thought by which you tap the Great Intelligence and then you work with a great intelligence. I thought and I prayed and I got an idea, and you will always get an idea when you do that."

He took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it, folded it, and walked over the the secretary. As he bowed respectfully, he fixed his eyes straight on her and said, "It. is absolutely imperative that your boss get this note immediately."

Now she knew people . . . and if he had been an ordinary boy she would have said, "Forget it and get back into the 21st position where you belong." But she said, "OK, show me that note." He handed her the note, she read it and smiled. She got up and walked into the boss's office and handed him the note, and he laughed out loud.

It said, "I am the 21st kid in line. Don't  make up your mind until you talk to me." 

The question: Did he get the job? Of course he did.

The question: Will he be able to handle himself in all the vicissitudes in life? Of course he will, because he is a thinker and a positive thinker.

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We have plague, social unrest, riots, arson, murder of innocents, political divide, a shuttered economy on the brink of collapse and universal anxiety.  Never has the world so needed resourcefulness.  Will we find it?  If so, how and when?