A Reflection on "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind".

When life gets difficult and impossible to deal with, what do you usually do? Would you face it with overflowing courage? Do you quiver instead, and refuse to fight? Or, will you, although, fight but at the end, you give up? These questions are the realities we can associate when life gets intractable, the fact that we are all exposed to different environment. But in the true-to-life movie entitled "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", there was a boy, who, was living in an environment with low chances of survival, managed to reach the peak of his success.

William Kamkwaba is a young genius living in central Malawi who improvises a windmill out of bicycle and other scrap yard parts to produce electricity for his family’s home, and he's the main character in the said movie. His village, Malawi, was hit by an intense drought that caused everyone's crops to fail, including theirs. Include their pro-business president who sold some of their lands, just for his own wellness. He was even forced to stop pursuing his studies due to the lack of financial support. However, William sought for other ways to learn, and spent his days in the library, trying to figure out how to bring electricity to his village. Persevering against the odds, William built a functioning windmill out of junkyard scraps, and thus became the local hero who harnessed the wind.

Here are the reflections I can associate with the movie.

1.) There is nothing wrong to dream.

As kids, we always dream a lot especially those impossible things. I,myself, I have always dreamt to become a successful engineer. I remember at the age of 6, when asked what would my profession be in the future, I would immediately state the word 'engineer' without even knowing exactly what that word meant. Like William in the movie, he had a lot of dreams. He even believed in magic or fairy tale. Who would have thought that those mere dreams would turn into a reality?

2.) When life gets hard, be the hardest.

All of us have faced many circumstances in life, and no one, betwixt the rich and the poor, are exempted. Despite all the hardships, be the hardest and never let these problems drag you down. William himself had encountered extreme hardships. But, he was harder enough to stop them from taking over his life.

3.) Never stop looking for solutions.

Problems require solutions. And, those solutions will not instantly show up and solve all the problems. It's us, who would look for them. William never stopped learning despite the financial crisis. He kept on reading in a library, and there he found the most realistic solution to solve the problem.

4.) Share your success to others.

"Share your success and help others succeed. Give everyone a chance to have a piece of the pie. If the pie's not big enough, make a bigger pie."— Dave Thomas

William shared his created windmill to his neighbors. Despite of the hardships he experienced in making it, he still shared it to others. In life, it is always important to help others regardless of how successful we are.

5.) Continue, and keep on going.

After William's success, a disease like Malaria spread across their place. It doesn't mean that, when you become successful, you will be instantly exempted and immune to problems. More problems will still follow, but, you are now bolder and braver enough to outsmart all of those.

Lyrically told and gloriously illustrated, this story is really an inspiration to all of us that even in the worst of times - a great idea and a lot of hard work can still rock the world.

Lead image source: socialjusticebooks.org