A Price To Everything In Life
There was this museum laid with beautiful marble tiles, with a huge marble statue displayed in the middle of the lobby. Many people came from all over the world just to admire this beautiful marble statue.
One night, the marble tiles started talking to the marble statue.
Marble tile: Marble statue, it’s just not fair, it’s just not fair! Why does everybody from all over the world come all the way here just to step on me while admiring you? Not fair!
Marble statue: My dear friend, marble tile. Do you still remember that we were actually from the same cave?
Marble tile: Yeah! That’s why I feel it is even more unfair. We were born from the same cave and yet we receive different treatment now. Not fair!"
Marble statue: Then, do you still remember the day when the designer tried to work on you, but you resisted the tools?
Marble tile: Yes, of course I remember. I hate that guy! How could he use those tools on me, it hurt so badly.
Marble statue: That’s right! He couldn’t work on you at all as you resisted being worked on.
Marble tile: So???
Marble statue: When he decided to give up on you and start working on me instead, I knew at once that I would be something different after his efforts. I did not resist his tools, instead I bore all the painful tools he used on me.
Marble tile: Mmmmmm……
Marble statue: My friend, there is a price to everything in life. Since you decided to give up half way, you can’t blame anybody who steps on you now."
The moral of the story is ….
It simply means that the more hard knocks you go through in life, the more you’ll learn and put them to use in the future!! Do not be discouraged by setbacks and failures. Past is past, you can’t change it but it is actually a blessing in disguise. Past was good, Present is better and the future will always be the best.
How Many Friends Do You Have?
Think about it…
The old man turned to me and asked, “How many friends have you?” Why 10 or 20 friends… I have plenty, and I named off just a few.
He rose quite slow with effort and sadly shook his head “A lucky child you are to have so many friends,” he said.
“But think of what you’re saying, there is so much that you do not even know who to name.” A friend is not just someone to whom you say ‘Hello’
A friend is a tender shoulder on which to softly cry on… a well, to pour your troubles down… and of course, raise your spirits high.
A friend is a hand to pull you up from darkness and despair… When all your other “so called” friends have helped to put you there.
A true friend is an ally who can’t be moved or bought… a voice to keep your name alive, when others have forgotten.
But most of all, a friend is a heart… a very strong and sturdy wall for from the hearts of friends there comes the greatest love of all!!!
So think of what I’ve spoken for every word is true and answer once again my child, “How many friends have you?”
And then he stood and faced me awaiting my reply. Softly I answered, “If lucky… one… I HAVE YOU!!!”
Pass this on and let your friends know that you care!!!
A Friend Is Always Special Because Friends Love You Because You Are You!
Be Contented
After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite taking 2 jobs, he brings back barely above 1K per month, he is happy as he is.
I wonder how he can be as happy as he is considering he has to skimp his life with the low pay to support a pair of old parents, in-laws, a wife, 2 daughters and the many bills of a household.
He explained that it was through one incident that he saw in India… that happened a few years ago when he was really feeling low and touring India after a major setback.
He said that right in front of his very eyes, he saw an Indian mother chop off her child’s right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother’s eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old child haunted him until today.
You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child’s hand been infected?? No, it was done for two simple words - - - TO BEG!
The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg. Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, a flock of 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another. The natural reaction of hunger.
Stricken by the happenings, he instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery. He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in the bakeries. The owner was dumbfounded but willingly sold everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than $0.25 per loaf) and spent another $100 to get daily necessities.
Off he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the bread and necessities to the children (mostly handicapped) and a few adults, he received cheers and bows from these unfortunate. For the first time in his life he wondered how people can give up their dignity for a loaf of bread which cost less than $0.25.
He began to tell himself how fortunate he is. How fortunate he is to be able to have a complete body, have a job, have a family, have the chance to complain what food is nice and what isn’t nice, have the chance to be clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived of…
Now I begin to think and feel it, too! Was my life really that bad? Perhaps… no, I should not feel bad at all… What about you? Maybe the next time you think you are, think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.
“Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have.”
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one which has been opened for us.
It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives.
The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can’t go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
Please send this message to those people who mean something to you, to those who have touched your life in one way or another, to those who make you smile when you really need it, to those that make you see the brighter side of things when you are really down, to those who you want to let them know that you appreciate their friendship.
Who Meant The Most To You?
There is this guy who loves two gals at the same time but he doesn? know which one he loves more. Someone taught him:
“If you are happy, who do you think of first? If you think of her, she is the one you love more.”
NO, THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO TEST THE FORMULA OF LOVE.
Ask yourself this question honestly:
“When you are sad, which gal/guy you want to share your burden with?” If you think of that gal/guy first, she/he is the one that you love more. However if you think of the same gal/guy when you are happy & sad, that’s the most perfect. But if you didn’t think of the same gal/guy, I would advise you to choose the one you are willing to share your sadness with.
In life, there are more sorrows than happiness. There are too many people whom you can share your happiness with, not necessary your lover. If you live your life happily, you can also enjoy it alone. Sadness, however not many people is willing to share burden with you. If you are willing to tell her/him your unhappiness, she/he got to be someone who is closest & most understanding to you.
In other words, if she/he only thinks of you when she/he is happy, but look for someone else when she/he is sad. This kind of lover is too unstable; she/he didn’t treat you as someone she/he can spend the rest of her life with.
Of course, I will be very happy if I am the first person to share her/his happiness. But, if she/he is sad, I will be too willing to stay by her/his side & ease her/his pain. Only then, I will believe I hold a very important position in her/his heart.
If you are sad, who comes to your mind first?
Friendship is a strange thing. We find ourselves telling each other the deepest details of our lives… things we don’t even share with the families who raised us. But what is a friend? A confidant? A shoulder to cry on? An ear to listen? A heart to feel? A friend is all these… and more. No matter where we met, no matter how long we’ve been together… I call you friend. A word so small, yet so large in feeling, a word filled with emotion, a word overflowing with love. Truly great things come in small packages.
Once the package of friendship has been opened, it can never be closed. It is a constant book always waiting… waiting to be read and enjoyed. We may have our disagreements… we may have our disappointments… we may argue.. we may concern one another friendship is a unique bond that lasts through all tribulations. A part of each of us goes into our friendships… our humor… our experiences… our tears.
Friendships are foundations… necessary for life… and love.
i have a touching story as well, this is an actual letter written from an elderly woman to a group of children who gave her a radio.
it will warm your heart & bring tears to your eyes (certainly brought mine)… just when you’d lost faith in human kindness:
a primary school in hougang received the following letter. it was sent to the principal’s office after the school had sponsored an event for the elderly.
this story is a credit to all human kind. read it and forward it to all those who could use a lift.
Dear H****** P****** School,
God bless you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent senior citizen’s event. I am 84 years old and live at the H****** Home for the Aged. All of my family has passed away.
I am all alone now and it is nice to know that someone is thinking of me. God bless you for your kindness to an old forgotten lady.
My roommate is 95 and has always had her own radio, but before I received one, she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping. The other day her radio fell off the night-stand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears.
She asked if she could listen to mine; and I said “fuck you!”
Life is good!
Sincerely,
Lim Por Por
Attitude
Jerry is the manager of a restaurant in America. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”
Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs, so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”
Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood I always choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it I always choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life.”
“But it’s not always that easy,” I protested.
“Yes, it is,” Jerry said “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. It’s your choice how you live your life.”
Several years later, I heard that Jerry accidentally did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business: he left the back door of his restaurant open one morning and was robbed by three armed men. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily,
Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.
I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Want to see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.
“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or choose to die. I chose to live.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.
In their eyes, I read “He’s a dead man. I knew I needed to take action.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything.” “Yes.” I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, “Bullets!” Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy your life or to hate it. The only thing that is truly yours – that no one can control or take from you – is your attitude, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.
Motivation
A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill.
In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?”
Hands started going up. He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up.
He then asked, “Who still wants it?”
Still the hands were up in the air. “Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty.
“Now who still wants it?” Still the hands went into the air.
“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.”
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special - Don’t ever forget it!
Please pass this onto everyone in your email address book. You will never know the lives it touches, the hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring!
Never Mind, There’s Tomorrow
Once, there lived a child. He lived in a happy family, with parents and siblings. However, he never stopped to think about how wonderful his life had been. He just kept on playing, squabbling with his siblings when they did not want to play what he wanted to play. However, when he wanted to apologize, he always said, “Never mind, there’s tomorrow.”
When he grew up a little, school was a very nice place for him. He learned, made friends, and was very happy. However, he never thought that this was happiness to him. It all came so naturally that he felt it should become part of his life. One day, he had a great fight with his best friend. Though he knew he was in the wrong, he never took the initiative to apologize or made up with his best friend. His excuse was, “Never mind, I’ll do it tomorrow.”
When he grew up yet some more, that best friend was no longer part of his. Even though he still sees his friend around, but they don’t even greet each other. But that was all right, because he still had other good friends. He and his friends did almost everything together, eating, playing, doing homework, and fooling around. Yes, they were another bunch of very good friends.
When he graduated, work kept him very busy. He’s found himself a very pretty and virtuous girlfriend and she soon became his constant companion. He made himself busy with work, because he wanted to get promoted to the highest position with the shortest time possible.
Sure, he missed his good friends. He missed them a lot. But he never got down to keep in touch with them, not even a telephone call. He always said, “Boy, I’m so tired, I’ll catch up with them tomorrow.” It didn’t affect him at all because he could find colleagues who are always willing to go pubing with him. Thus, as time passes by, he’s forgotten to call his friends.
After he’s got married with kids, he works even harder in order to bring comfort to his family. He never buys flowers for his wife anymore, nor does he remember his wife’s birthdays and wedding anniversary. It was all right because his wife always understood him, and never blamed him. Of course, he felt guilty at times and wanted very much to have a chance to say to his wife “I love you”, but he never got down to doing it. His excuse was “never mind, I’ll do it tomorrow for sure”. He never made it to his children’s birthday parties, but his time he did not knew how it would affect the children. The children began to drift away from him, as they never really spent time with their father.
One day, disaster struck when his wife was killed in an accident. It was a hit and run accident. But on that day, he was in the middle of a meeting. Failing to understand that it is a fatal accident, he arrived by his wife’s deathbed only to see her on the verge of death. Before he could mouth out the words “I love you”, his wife had already passed away.
The man became despondent and tried to find solace in his children after his wife’s death. However, he soon realized that the children do not even try to communicate with him. Soon, his children have grown up and found their own families. Nobody cared for this old man who in the past hadn’t spared his time for them.
He moved into the best Old Folk’s Home, which provides excellent service with the money he has saved for him and his wife’s 50th, 60th, and 70th anniversary celebrations. All the money intended to go to Hawaii, New Zealand, and other countries went into the fund that pays for his stay in the home.
From that time until his deathbed, there were only old folks and nurses taking care of him. He now felt the loneliness that he did not feel before. Upon his deathbed, he called a nurse in and said to her, “Ah. If only I had realized this earlier… " and died with tears upon his cheek.
What I am trying to tell you is time never stops. You go on and on, and before you realized it, you’ve already gone very far. If you had quarreled, make up quickly!
If you feel you need to hear your friend’s voice, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone.
If there are many dreams that you wish to fulfill, fulfill them as soon as possible.
Lastly, but most importantly, if you feel you need to tell somebody that you care, don’t wait until it is too late. If you keep thinking you will do that another day, then that day will never come. If you always think that tomorrow will come, then ’tomorrow’ will run out quickly and you’ll realize the time that you’ve left behind you.
Relentless Pursuit Of Perfection
A Good Story for Great Friends…
There once was a little girl who had a bad temper. Her mother gave her a bag of nails and told her that every time she lost her temper, she must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day the girl had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as she learned to control her anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. She discovered it was easier to hold her temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the girl didn’t lose her temper at all. She told her mother about it and the mother suggested that the girl now pull out one nail for each day that she was able to hold her temper.
The days passed and the young girl was finally able to tell her mother that all the nails were gone. The mother took her daughter by the hand and led her to the fence. She said, “You have done well, my daughter, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.” You can put a knife in a person and draw it out.
It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Friends are very rare jewels, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us.
A “Love” Story
Once upon a time there was an island where all the feelings lived. Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all the others, including Love.
One day it was announced to all of the feelings that the island was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. So all the feelings prepared their boats to leave. Love was the only one that stayed. She wanted to preserve the island paradise until the last possible moment. When the island was almost totally under, Love decided it was time to leave. She began looking for someone to ask for help.
Just then Richness was passing by in a grand boat. Love asked, “Richness, Can I come with you on your boat?” Richness answered, “I’m sorry, but there is a lot of silver and gold on my boat and there would be no room for you anywhere.”
Then Love decided to ask Vanity for help who was passing in a beautiful vessel. Love cried out, “Vanity, help me please.” “I can’t help you,” Vanity said. “You are all wet and will damage my beautiful boat.”
Next, Love saw Sadness passing by. Love said, “Sadness, please let me go with you.” Sadness answered, “Love, I’m sorry, but, I just need to be alone now.”
Then, Love saw Happiness. Love cried out, “Happiness, please take me with you.” But Happiness was so overjoyed that he didn’t hear Love calling to him.
Love began to cry. Then, she heard a voice say, “Come Love, I will take you with me.” It was an elder. Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that she forgot to ask the elder his name. When they arrived on land the elder went on his way. Love realized how much she owed the elder.
Love then found Knowledge and asked, “Who was it that helped me?” “It was Time,” Knowledge answered. “But why did Time help me when no one else would?” Love asked. Knowledge smiled and with deep wisdom and sincerity, answered, “Because only Time is capable of understanding how great Love is.”