Beautiful Lesson

I have spoken of a business event I recently attended. One of the speakers read a story from a book. The book is Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. I am going to pass along the lesson I took from the story and the speaker. Enjoy.

"Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.The current of the river swept silently over them all-young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth." How many of us are clinging to our current way of life? Resisting things that we have been taught from birth to resist?

"But one creature said at last 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'  The other creatures laughed and said 'Fool, let go and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom.'" Isn't that just like friends and family? Whenever you decide to take a risk and step away from the norm to do something different, they berate you.  They laugh and mock you because they don't share your dream. They don't have your vision. They cannot imagine living a life outside the comfort of what they have always known.

"But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more." You see, when you release the burdens, when you release the baggage that you are clinging to, when you stop resisting new ways of living your life, you feel as though a load has been taken from your shoulders. A weight has been removed and you feel lighter. You have been lifted up and you are bruised and hurt no more.