Do not feel sad when things don’t go your way

Today I visited a newbie farmer and his wife. It seems they have thrown the towel in as a for sale sign was hung out at the gate. When I pulled up, a man in his thirties greeted me. I could tell by just surveying the field, they were going thru a very hard time. Coming to think of it, whose doing well these days given the relentless freaky weather…I mean if Michaelangelo was denied fine Italian marble and just had clay to work with. Even he would just be an excellent flower pot artisan.

While walking with the man he began to recount how they had once sold everything in the city and moved here, but it seems they can’t seem to make ends meet. I did not say much instead I got directly to business and asked, how much are you asking. When the figure was blurted out. I held out my hand and said, I think we can shake on that figure. That was when the woman rushed to her husbands side and whispered something. I could tell from the way she looked at me, she wasn’t keen on selling. That was when the man changed tack and asked whether they could have more time to think about it.

I said no. Shake my hand and it’s done, I pressed on. And this time the woman said quite openly to her husband…if he’s willing to pay that much for the land then he knows that he can get much more out of it….we best hold on to the land and give it another go.

I merely sigh thereafter I expressed in a condescending tone, you will never get such a good offer again.

While pulling out of the yard. I wound down the car window and asked again….this is your last chance. This time the woman stepped forward and told me, we are going to give it another go….do us a favour on the way out please take down the for sale sign.

I just shook my head in feigned despair and drove right off.

Truth is I will never pay such a high price for that land….truth is I do this at least twice every year whenever I see newbie farmers at the end of their rope and truth is it always works like a charm…they will give it another go and usually they hit pay dirt as when it’s already that bad, it can really just get better.

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Never feel sad when you have it hard….hard at school…hard at work…hard at the playground…hard at relationships….so hard that it seems everyone is having it so easy all the time. While all you seem to be doing is chucking out heavy boulders just to move a few miserable inches forward. Because when things don’t go your way…it’s not just a case of not being able to get what you always expected to get out of life. Rather you get to experience first hand many other things that the people who have it easy all the time never ever get to know about….trust me. One day when you punch thru that hole and it opens right up like open sesame and make all those cool moves that puts you at the top of the hill.

You will come to realise that it wasn’t the things that came really easy to you that really made all the difference. Rather it was actually the things that you had to work really hard at with loads of superglue and duct tape that really all added to make the defining difference in your life.

And when you see it that way, then hopefully you will have that once in the life time privilege of experiencing a rare moment of epiphany and realise that if those hard luck things didn’t feature so much in your life….you would certainly never be the person who you are.

I think when we learn to see success thru this alternate lens of being nothing more than a series of failures, shattered dreams and countless agonies of defeats…then it’s not about how smart or dumb like me you are or even whether you were born into rich or poor parents. Rather it’s just about one thing whether you can keep it day in and day out like a steady beat of metronome when all others have long sinced thrown in the towel and stomped right off.