The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the water close to Japan has not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The further the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring the fish. If the return trip took more time, the fish were not fresh.
To solve this problem, fish companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer.However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen fish and they did not like the taste of frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So, fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, they were tired, dull, and lost their fresh-fish taste. The fishing industry faced an impending crisis! But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan.
How did they manage...?
To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks but with a small shark🐋🐋.The fish are challenged and hence are constantly on the move. The challenge they face keeps them alive and fresh!
"Have we realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired and dull....?"
Basically in our lives, sharks 🐋🐋 are new challenges to keep us active. If we are steadily conquering challenges, we are happy.
*Moral - Our challenges keep us energized. Let's not create Success and revel in it in a state of inertia.We have the resources, skills and abilities to make a difference. Let's put a shark 🐋🐋 in our tank and see how far we can really go.....
We were getting ready to go to bed when my 7 year old daughter said in a calm tone, "Mamma tomorrow is my IEO (English Olympiad ) Exam".
It was 10.30pm.
She was unwell the last week,
so we didn't practice and
on the weekend I was busy with work.
Amidst all this we forgot about the exam.
Now the mother in me wanted to react...
I wanted to give my daughter a lecture, maybe like this...
"What?? You're telling me now,
why didn't you remind me earlier.
Why did you go to play?
Why didn't you study?
How can you forget?
You're so careless.
You can't even remember your exam dates"
*I could have done that and maybe that's the easiest way to express OUR anxiety*
*Or fear Or Any Big Emotion We are Going Through,*
_BUT I chose to Respond._
I said, "Hmm both Mamma and My Little Girl Forgot about it.
Sometimes we do forget things.
Now we can sit for quick 15 minutes
and
you can ask me any doubts you have."
She quickly brought her IEO workbook and the next 15 minutes we were engrossed in solving the paper.
What surprised me was the way the things went smoothly and today morning she even solved one more paper.
All this happened because as a parent I chose to Respond.
*When children are anxious*
* or scared*
* or are facing any big emotion,*
* they DON'T Need an adult who is yelling,*
* lecturing*
* or advising.*
*They need an adult*
* who is able to guide them*
* to a solution*
And
*stand with them.*
That's YOUR Responsibility as , 'A Better Parent.'
Today I Want You to Think Which are Some of the Situations Where You As a Parent, React and How Can You Choose to Respond, Effectively.
1 Heavy rains remind us of challenges in life. Never ask for a lighter rain, just pray for a better umbrella. That is Attitude.
2 When flood comes, fish eats ants and when flood recedes, ants eat fish. Only time matters. Just hold on. God gives opportunity to every one.
3 In a theatre when drama plays, you opt for front seats. When film is screened, you opt for rear seats. Your position in life is only relative. Not absolute.
4 For making soap, oil is required. But to clean oil, soap is required. This is the irony of life.
5 Life is not about finding the right person. But creating the right relationship.
6 It's not how we care in the beginning. But how much we care till the end.
7 Every problem has (N+1) solutions: where N is the number of solutions that you have tried and 1 is that you have not tried.
8 When you are in problem, don't think it's the End. It is only a Bend in life.
9 Difference between Man and God is God gives, gives and forgives. Man gets, gets and forgets.
10 Only two category of people are happy in life-The Mad and the Child. Be Mad to achieve a goal. Be a Child to enjoy what you achieved.
11 Never play with the feelings of others. You may win. But loose the person for lifetime.
12 There is NO Escalator to success. ONLY STEPS!!!
A little boy went to his old grandpa and asked, "What's the value of life?"
The grandpa gave him one stone and said, "Find out the value of this stone, but don't sell it."
The boy took the stone to an Orange Seller and asked him what its cost would be.
The Orange Seller saw the shiny stone and said, "You can take 12 oranges and give me the stone."
The boy apologized and said that the grandpa has asked him not to sell it.
He went ahead and found a vegetable seller.
"What could be the value of this stone?" he asked the vegetable seller.
The seller saw the shiny stone and said, "Take one sack of potatoes and give me the stone."
The boy again apologized and said he can't sell it.
Further ahead, he went into a jewellery shop and asked the value of the stone.
The jeweler saw the stone under a lens and said, "I'll give you 1 million for this stone."
When the boy shook his head, the jeweler said, "Alright, alright, take 2 24karat gold necklaces, but give me the stone."
The boy explained that he can't sell the stone.
Further ahead, the boy saw a precious stone's shop and asked the seller the value of this stone.
When the precious stone's seller saw the big ruby, he lay down a red cloth and put the ruby on it.
Then he walked in circles around the ruby and bent down and touched his head in front of the ruby. "From where did you bring this priceless ruby from?" he asked.
"Even if I sell the whole world, and my life, I won't
be able to purchase this priceless stone."
Stunned and confused, the boy returned to the grandpa and told him what had happened.
"Now tell me what is the value of life, grandpa?"
Grandpa said,
"The answers you got from the Orange Seller, the Vegetable Seller, the Jeweler & the Precious Stone's Seller explain the value of our life...
You may be a precious stone, even priceless, but, people will value you based on their intellectual status, their level of information, their belief in you, their motive behind entertaining you, their ambition, their risk taking ability & ultimately their calibre.
So don't fear, you will surely find someone who will discern your true value."
*Respect yourself.*
*Don't sell yourself cheap.*
*You are rare, Unique, Original and the only one of ur kind.*
*Your are a masterpiece because u r MASTER'S PIECE.*
A Father Hadn't Spoken to His Daughter in a Year. But What He Did for Her is a Lesson in Forgiveness
Like many inspiring movies and books, this short story may be fictional. However, the impact that this work will have on its readers is very real. Enjoy!
Don’t Let It End This Way
The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses’ station on the seventh floor and glanced at the clock. It was 9:00 P.M.
I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for room 712, last room of the hall. Room 712 had a new patient, Mr. Williams, a man alone, a man strangely silent about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but dropped his eyes when he saw it was only his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating, just what I wanted to hear. There seemed little indication; he had suffered a slight heart attack a few hours earlier.
He looked up from his starched white bed. “Nurse, would you . . .” he hesitated with tears filling his eyes. Once before, he had started to ask me a question, but had changed his mind.
I touched his hand, waiting.
He brushed away a tear. “Would you call my daughter? Tell her I’ve had a heart attack, a slight one. You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have.” His respiration suddenly sped up.
I turned his nasal oxygen up to eight liters a minute. “Of course I’ll call her,” I said, studying his face.
He gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency. “Will you call her right away – as soon as you can?” He was breathing fast – too fast.
“I’ll call her first thing,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Now you get some rest.”
I flipped off the light. He closed his eyes, such young blue eyes in this 50-year-old face.
Room 712 was dark except for a faint night-light under the sink. Oxygen gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I moved through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were cold. Below, a foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot. Above, snow clouds quilted the night sky. I shivered.
“Nurse,” he called. “Could you get me a pencil and paper?”
I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the bedside table.
“Thank you,” he said.
I smiled at him and left.
I walked back to the nurses’ station and sat in a squeaky swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams’ daughter was listed on his chart as the next of kin. I got her number from information and dialed. Her soft voice answered.
Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered nurse at the hospital. I’m calling about your father. He was admitted today with a slight heart attack and . . . “
“No!” she screamed into the phone, startling me. “He’s not dying is he?” It was more a painful plea than a question.
“His condition is stable at the moment,” I said, trying hard to sound convincing.
Silence. I bit my lip. “You must not let him die!” she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling that my hand trembled on the phone.
“He is getting the very best care.”
“But you don’t understand,” she pleaded. “My daddy and I haven’t spoken in almost a year. We had a terrible argument on my twenty-first birthday, over my boyfriend. I ran out of the house. I . . . I haven’t been back. All these months I’ve wanted to go to him for forgiveness. The last thing I said to him was, “I hate you.’”
Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat, listening, tear’s burning my eyes. A father and daughter so lost to each other! Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It had been so long since I had said I love you.
As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer. “Please God, let his daughter find forgiveness.”
“I’m coming, now! I’ll be there in 30 minutes,” she said. Click. She had hung up.
I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the desk. I couldn’t concentrate. Room 712. I knew I had to get back to 712. I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door.
Mr. Williams lay unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was none.
“Code 99. Room 712. Code 99. Stat.” The alert was shooting through the hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom by the bed.
Mr. Williams had gone into cardiac arrest.
With lightning speed, I leveled the bed and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs. I positioned my head over his chest and compressed. One, two, three. I tried to count. At 15, I moved back to his mouth and breathed as deeply as I could. Where was help? Again I compressed and breathed. Compressed and breathed. He could not die!
“Oh, God,” I prayed. “His daughter is coming. Don’t let it end this way.”
The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room, pushing emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual compression of the heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the intravenous tubing.
I connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat. My own heart pounded. “God, don’t let it end like this. Not in bitterness and hatred. His daughter is coming, let her find peace.”
“Stand back,” cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. William’s chest. Over and over we tried, but nothing. No response. Mr. Williams was dead.
A nurse unplugged the oxygen. The gurgling stopped. One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold wind rattled the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside – everywhere – seemed a bed of blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his daughter?
When I left the room, I saw her against the wall by a water fountain. A doctor, who had been in 712 only moments before, stood at her side, talking to her and gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against the wall.
Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded eyes. She knew. The doctor had told her that her father was gone.
I took her hand and led her into the nurses’ lounge. We sat on the little green stools, neither saying a word. She stared straight at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced, almost breakable looking. “Janie, I’m so sorry,” I said. It was pitifully inadequate.
“I never hated him, you know. I loved him,” she said.
God, please help her, I prayed.
Suddenly she whirled toward me. “I want to see him.”
My first thought was, why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around her. We walked slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her hand, wishing she would change her mind. She pushed open the door.
We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in unison. Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets.
I tried not to look at her, at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed against the bedside table. My hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up. I read:
My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me. I know that you love me. I love you, too. Daddy.
The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it once. Then twice. Her tortured face grew radiant. Peace began to glisten in her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast.
“Thank you, God,” I whispered, looking up at the window. A few crystal stars blinked through the blackness. A snowflake hit the window and melted away, gone forever.
Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window. But thank you, God, that relationships, sometimes as fragile as snowflakes, can be mended together again. But there is not a moment to spare.
I crept from the room and hurried to the phone. I would call my own father. I would say, “I love you.”
At the point of death, a man, Tom Smith, called his children and he advised them to follow his footsteps so that they can have peace of mind in all that they do..
His daughter, Sara, said,
"Daddy, its unfortunate you are dying without a penny in your bank..
Other fathers' that you tag as being corrupt, thieves of public funds left houses and properties for their children; even this house we live in is a rented apartment..
Sorry, I can't emulate you, just go, let's chart our own course..
Few moments later, their father gave up the spirit..
Three years later, Sara went for an interview in a multinational company..
At interview the Chairman of the committee asked,
"Which Smith are you..??"
Sara replied,
"I am Sara Smith. My Dad Tom Smith is now late.."
Chairman cuts in,
"O my God, you are Tom Smith's daughter..?"
He turned to the other members and said,
"This Smith man was the one that signed my membership form into the Institute of Administrators and his recommendation earned me where I am today. He did all these free. I didn't even know his address, he never knew me. He just did it for me.."
He turned to Sara,
"I have no questions for you, consider yourself as having gotten this job, come tomorrow, your letter will be waiting for you.."
Sara Smith became the Corporate Affairs Manager of the company with two Cars with Drivers, A duplex attached to the office, and a salary of £1,00,000 per month excluding allowances and other costs..
After two years of working in the company, the MD of the company came from America to announce his intention to resign and needed a replacement. A personality with high integrity was sought after, again the company's Consultant nominated Sara Smith..
In an interview, she was asked the secret of her success,,
With tears, she replied, "My Daddy paved these ways for me. It was after he died that I knew that he was financially poor but stinkingly rich in integrity, discipline and honesty".
She was asked again, why she is weeping since she is no longer a kid as to miss her dad still after a long time..
She replied, "At the point of death, I insulted my dad for being an honest man of integrity. I hope he will forgive me in his grave now. I didn't work for all these, he did it for me to just walk in".
So, finally she was asked, "Will you follow your father's foot steps as he requested ?"
And her simple answer was, "l now adore the man, I have a big picture of him in my living room and at the entrance of my house. He deserves whatever I have after God".
Are you like Tom Smith..?
It pays to build a name, the reward doesn't come quickly but it will come however long it may take and it lasts longer..
Integrity, discipline, self control and fear of God makes a man wealthy, not the fat bank account..
Once a man got lost in a desert. The water in his flask had run out two days ago, and he was on his last legs. He knew that if he didn't get some water soon, he would surely die. The man saw a small hut ahead of him. He thought it would be a mirage or maybe a hallucination, but having no other option, he moved toward it. As he got closer, he realized it was quite real. So he dragged his tired body to the door with the last of his strength.
The hut was not occupied and seemed like it had been abandoned for quite some time. The man entered into it, hoping against hope that he might find water inside.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw what was in the hut - a water hand pump...... It had a pipe going down through the floor, perhaps tapping a source of water deep under-ground.
He began working the hand pump, but no water came out. He kept at it and still nothing happened. Finally he gave up from exhaustion and frustration. He threw up his hands in despair. It looked as if he was going to die after all.
Then the man noticed a bottle in one corner of the hut. It was filled with water and corked up to prevent evaporation.
He uncorked the bottle and was about to gulp down the sweet life-giving water, when he noticed a piece of paper attached to it. Handwriting on the paper read : "Use this water to start the pump. Don't forget to fill the bottle when you're done."
He had a dilemma. He could follow the instruction and pour the water into the pump, or he could ignore it and just drink the water.
What to do? If he let the water go into the pump, what assurance did he have that it would work? What if the pump malfunctioned? What if the pipe had a leak? What if the underground reservoir had long dried up?
But then... maybe the instruction was correct. Should he risk it? If it turned out to be false, he would be throwing away the last water he would ever see.
Hands trembling, he poured the water into the pump. Then he closed his eyes, said a prayer, and started working the pump.
He heard a gurgling sound, and then water came gushing out, more than he could possibly use. He luxuriated in the cool and refreshing stream. He was going to live!
After drinking his fill and feeling much better, he looked around the hut. He found a pencil and a map of the region. The map showed that he was still far away from civilization, but at least now he knew where he was and which direction to go.
He filled his flask for the journey ahead. He also filled the bottle and put the cork back in. Before leaving the hut, he added his own writing below the instruction: "Believe me, it works!"
This story is all about life. It teaches us that We must GIVE before We can RECEIVE Abundantly.
More importantly, it also teaches that FAITH plays an important role in GIVING.
The man did not know if his action would be rewarded, but he proceeded regardless.
Without knowing what to expect, he made a Leap of Faith.
Water in this story represents the *Good things in Life*
Give life some *"Water"* to *Work with*, and it will *RETURN _far more than you put in_.........!!!*
```A son took his old father to a restaurant for an evening dinner. Father being very old and weak, while eating, dropped food on his shirt and trousers. Other diners watched him in disgust while his son was calm.```
```After he finished eating, his son who was not at all embarrassed, quietly took him to the washroom, wiped the food particles, removed the stains, combed his hair and fitted his spectacles firmly. When they came out, the entire restaurant was watching them in dead silence, not able to grasp how someone could embarrass themselves publicly like that. The son settled the bill and started walking out with his father.```
```At that time, an old man amongst the diners called out to the son and asked him, “Don’t you think you have left something``` behind?”.
```The son replied, “No sir, I haven’t”.```
```The old man retorted, “Yes, you have! You left a lesson for every son and hope for every father”.```
```The restaurant went silent.```
```Moral: To care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honors. We all know, how our parents cared for us for every little thing. Love them, respect them,care for them becauze they haved brought u to this unique world.```
```A great lesson to the children who dump their parents in old age home for their selfish comforts..```
