There is a wonderful old fable set in the time that the great ancient library located in Alexandria, Egypt burned in 84 B.C. As the story goes, only one book was saved. But it was not a valuable book; and so a poor man, who could read a little, bought it for only a few coins.
The book wasn’t very interesting, but between its pages there was something very interesting indeed. It was a thin strip of vellum on which was written the secret of the Touchstone!
The touchstone was a small pebble that purportedly could turn any common metal into pure gold. The writing explained that it was lying on a nearby seashore among thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this: The real stone would feel warm, while ordinary pebbles are cold.
So the man sold all of his few belongings, bought some simple supplies, travelled to, and camped on the designated seashore. Upon his arrival, he immediately began testing the immense number pebbles that lay upon the sand.
He soon surmised that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw them down again because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times. So, he decided that when he would feel one that was cold, he would then throw it into the sea.
He spent the whole of his initial day doing just this, but, alas, none of the hundreds he felt and threw into the sea was the touchstone. Yet he continued on and on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold. Throw it into the sea. Pick up another. Cold. Throw it into the sea.
The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months. One day, however, about mid-afternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm. However, he threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done.
The man had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the one he craved finally came along, the habit that had become so engrained in him compelled him to toss it away.
And so, my friends, it is with opportunity.
Unless we are vigilant, it’s easy to fail to recognize an opportunity when it is in hand and it’s just as easy to throw it away.
“How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.” ? Paulo Coelho, Brida
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué