I spent fifteen years in silence. Once, I brushed shoulders with wealth, but I lost it almost immediately. I was a young, naive, ignorant, and inexperienced man. Since childhood, I had dreamed of a better world without fully grasping the cost of the sacrifice it demanded.

When one has known self-sacrifice, when one has “shed blood” for a noble cause, when one has risen from the land of misery and death into which society often exiles us, one inevitably becomes a free man—because one has triumphed over the trials and hardships of life.

A man, Thierry Nyamen, once said during a conference that if you want to succeed, you must accept one truth in silence: life is unfair. Indeed, life is unfair because there are those who will lie down in bed and never have the grace to rise again the next morning. Without being sick, death strikes them in the fog of the night as they lie down. Heart attack. Stroke. And so on. Death can strike anyone, at any time.

It is a blessing for my readers to be able to read this, because they are among the silent survivors of life’s day and night storms. These storms wreak havoc and cause shipwrecks. Some people are taken suddenly at the wheel of their car, on the way to their PhD defense, a job interview, a visa appointment, or a medical exam.

How would you cope if death suddenly knocked at your door? You must learn to wear mourning clothes in silence, so as not to alert even your enemies. Learn from your mistakes. Write down every lesson learned. Don’t shout other people’s mistakes from the rooftops—because tomorrow, you may make the same ones.

Above all, never become a public broadcaster of bad news. Do not make your problems your companion. Focus instead on the solution to the problem, so much so that you forget the problem itself and hold on only to the beginning of the solution. Walk! Open your heart to life and to nature.

Learn from them! Become a close companion to the birds and animals, and observe how they suffer in silence without complaining. Draw strength from their pain, and become a better version of yourself. In a word: Walk! Observe! Weep! Silently! And when someone asks you what’s wrong, smile, and say to them: “I’m happy to be enrolled in the school of life.”

This text is an excerpt from the book “Succeed at All Costs: The 5 Fingers of Success” written by Jean-Paul Marie (Pastor Samuel Binyou).

We invite you to read the next article: “SUCCESS toward ACCOMPLISHMENT?”

THE LAW OF SILENCE. THE LAW OF SILENCE.