Acres of diamonds lying within you
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Acres of diamonds lying within you
Man looks into the external circumstances for his success. Success is in-built. Unlimited talent and energy is hidden within you. You have unlimited wealth lying inside. It is waiting for your exploration and exploration. It is waiting to be harnessed. It is waiting to come outside. Don’t look into the external world for your success like the African who went out in search of diamond though it was lying in his backyard.
It is a true story of a poor farmer of Africa. The farmer had some rocky land where practically no crop was grown. Despite that he was quite happy with his living conditions. One day a wise man came to see him. He holds him about the value of diamonds. He said, “If you had a diamond the size of your thumb you could have your own city.” “If you had a diamond the size of your fist you could own your own country.” The farmer heard him carefully and thought over the matter. After the wise man left, the farmer became restless in the night, all the while thinking how to acquire a diamond. The next morning he sold out all his farm, farmhouse and the entire property and went in search of a diamond. He went from one country to anther in Africa and Europe but did not find any diamond. By the time he reached Spain he was almost broken, psychologically down, so he decided to end his life. He threw himself away in the Barcelona River and committed suicide.
In his native place, the man who had purchased his land, one day saw across the stream, the rays of the morning sun hit a stone and made it sparkle like a rainbow. He picked up the stone and kept it in his living room. The same wise man, after a long time, again appeared and came to the old house and shouted “Hay Hafiz, are you in?” “Are you back?” The wise man entered the living room and saw the dazzling stone. The new owner of the house did not recognize the wise man and asked, “what is the matter? I see you for the first time.” The wise man said, “ That stone is not an ordinary stone, that is a piece of diamond.” The farmer innocently said, “No, No, that is just a stone I picked up from the stream. Come, I will show you there are many more like that.” They went and picked up a few more and picked up a few more stones like that and sent them for analysis. And as expected, they were found to be diamonds. It was later found that the farm was replete with acres and acres of diamonds.
But wait! Mere knowledge of diamond inside acres of land may be a necessary condition for richness but not a sufficient condition, as it happened in the village of Palikhan in Chhattisgarh(India). One barnu ram, a wizened old man’s son one day found a stone in his field some 10 years ago. It so happened that his son, while preparing the soil for planting, saw a stone, which he picked up. The father said to his son, “This looks like a different variety of stone. What shall we do with it?” The old man went to the nearest market and sold it to a shopkeeper for Rs.3000/- and 5 kg of rice. The old man had no idea of what the actual value of that stone was. However, since that day the news had spread that the whole area was full of diamonds and diamond mines could be reckoned among the top 22 in the world. But how about the old man, he is still poor, still starving. His 2.22 acres of land have been fenced off and soil samples taken. He is waiting for the day when some company would come and dig diamonds from his land. He hopes that this will solve his problem of poverty. So more important is exploitation than mere knowledge of the existence of something under the land.
You too have acres of diamond within you. You have immense potentiality, unlimited talent waiting for exploitation. According to William James “The human being uses only 10-12% of their potentiality.” It is really sad that our abilities and capabilities are abysmally underutilized. All we need is to explore and exploit them more vigorously. Reading Heads You Win and Tails You Win will surely help you have access to the diamonds lying within you and inspire you to exploit and harness your talent.
