Remember, you are priceless and unique

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $10 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $10 bill?” Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give this $10 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple up the $10 bill. He asked, “Who still wants it?” Still hands were up in the air.

“Well, what if I do this?” He dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty and asked, “Who still wants it?” Still hands went up into the air.

My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what was done to the money, it was still wanted because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $10. 

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 may feel as though we are worthless.

Moral: But no matter what has happened or will happen, you will never lose your value; dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless and unique to those who love you.

Judging People

A man with his donkey carrying two sacks of wheat was on his way to the market. After a little while he was tired and they rested under a tree. When he woke up from his nap he could not see the donkey and started searching for the donkey everywhere. On the way he met a boy, he asked the boy, “Have you seen my donkey?” The boy asked, “Is the donkey’s left eye blind, his right foot lame and is he carrying a load of wheat?” The man was happy and said, “Yes, exactly! Where have you seen it?” the boy answered “I haven’t seen it.” This made the man very angry and he took the boy to the village chief for punishment.
 
The judge asked, “Dear boy, if you had not seen at the donkey, how could you describe it?”
 
The boy answered, “I saw the tracks of a donkey and the right and left tracks were different from this I understood that the donkey that passed there was limping. And the grass on the right side of the road was eaten but the grass on the left was not. From that I understood that his left eye was blind. There were wheat seeds scattered on the ground and I understood that he must have been carrying a load of wheat".
 
The judge understood the boy’s cleverness and told the man to forgive the boy.

Moral: Don't be Too Quick in Judging people.

Who’s packing your chute?

Charles Plumb, a US Navy Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam.


After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile.
Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands.  


He was captured and spent the next six years in a Communist prison. He survived that ordeal and now lectures about lessons learned from that experience.  


One day, when he and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Nam from the carrier, Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!” “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb. “Oh, I was the one who packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man smiled and said, “Yep, I guess it worked!” Plumb assured him, “It sure did work — if your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”  


Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about the man who has packed his parachute. Plumb kept wondering what the man might have looked like in a Navy uniform. “I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said good morning, how are you or anything, because you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.” Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn’t know.  


Now Plumb asks his audiences, “Who’s packing your chute” 



Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that we all need many kinds of parachutes. We need mental, emotional and spiritual parachutes as well. While a prisoner of war, Plumb called on all of these supports before reaching safety. His experience reminds us all to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead. 

Recognize and appreciate all of those people who pack our parachutes everyday, for they are the ones who truly deserve the credit for our survival.