What Can We Learn From Ray Charles About Overcoming Adversity?

Let me tell you something. Blindness wasn't my tragedy. My tragedy would have been if I let blindness stop me.

I lost my sight, sure. Lost it young when I still didn't fully understand the world. But you know what I found out? That wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a man. The worst thing is to have all your faculties and no vision—no direction, no purpose, no fire in your belly. Some sighted people go through life blind as the day is long.

When I was at the school for the blind in St. Augustine, they could have taught me to feel sorry for myself. Instead, they taught me to work. They taught me that being blind didn't make me less than nobody—it just meant I had to be smarter, sharper, more disciplined. My mother, God rest her, she raised me to believe I could do anything. She didn't treat me like I was broken. She treated me like I was her son who happened to not have sight, and that was just a detail we'd work around.

Adversity is a teacher if you let it be. It strips away all the nonsense. It shows you what you're really made of. I've known sighted musicians who didn't have half my determination. I've met people with perfect vision who couldn't see the path in front of them.

Here's what I learned: adversity teaches you to listen. When you can't see, you hear things other people miss. You develop other senses. You become more aware. That made me a better musician because I had to really listen to everything—my band, the audience, the spaces between the notes.

Adversity also teaches you humility and resilience. You fall down, you get back up. You do it again. You do it until you win. And you celebrate every small victory because you know what it cost you.

Don't waste time crying about what you don't have. Find out what you do have and develop it. Be twice as good. Work three times as hard. That's not inspiration—that's mathematics. That's the only way I know to overcome.