I read this story from a mailing list, it’s a very nice post and very inspiring. It originally posted in Indonesian, so I decided to translate this into English so that more people can read and more people can gain the benefit. 🙂 And I hope that my translation will be good enough hehe :p
Once upon a time, there is a young smart grasshopper who lives in a forest. This fellow grasshopper is blessed with a finest quality among his peers, his jump is the highest and he’s proud of it. He jumps almost on everything, trees to trees, branches to branches, and one day on his jumping adventure, he saw a village close to the horizon. The village looks peaceful and green. And he wishes to go there.
He dreams to be there, he shares this dream to his best friend, the dove. The dove told him “why not!”, he is willing to take his friend to that village. And excitedly, both of them started their journey. They reached the village after few days of flying and resting. After that they are exploring the village and saw a very beautiful garden with and they decided to take a rest on a garden which is guarded by a big black dog. The grasshopper asked the watch dog, “Why are you here mister Dog? Who are you?” The dog answers that he was chosen to watch the garden because he is the best dog in town.
Heard the proud answer from the dog, the grasshopper feels intimidated, he told the dog that he’s quite sure that the dog can’t beat every animal, therefore he challenge him to prove that he can beat the dog. The dog accepts the challenge and points the high garden gate – they were competing to jump over the gate.
Both of them are approaching the gate. The dog takes some distance, sprints and beautifully jumps the tall gate easily. The next turn obviously goes to the grasshopper. He jumps and only reach three quarter of the gate height, well, it’s only the first attempt. He tries the second, the third and all his efforts were in vain.
The black dog laughs at him, and says, “Well, are you satisfied now? You have lost this challenge.” “Not yet,” the grasshopper firmly and says “That’s the only first challenge, which you choose. The next one, I’ll choose it. Do you dare?”
“What ever it is, bring it on, I’m ready”
“This time is very simple, I challenge you just to jump from the the place you are standing. Just jump up and land, we’ll see who can jump the highest and how many times from each own height.”
The dog tries it first and again, he can jump very high, which is 4 times his height. The grasshopper jumps after him, his jump was only half of the dog’s jump, however, that jump was 40 times his height. Therefore, the winner is our little grasshopper.
“Wow, you’re so great.” says the dog. “But since we don’t have a winner yet, we should have the third match.”
“It won’t be necessary.” says the grasshopper.
“Basically, each time we choose the competition, we’ll choose what we good at. Therefore it’s quite obvious that we’ll win that challenge.” the grasshopper continues.
Morale of the story is, you and I have different talent, potential and standard about winning or other things in our lives.
It is not wise to compare ourselves to others, because our winning moment is when we can exceed our own records with our talent or ability or skills. Or you may say, break your own records.
REFLECTION :
Dear friends, how high is yours? Most of the time, we like to compare ourselves with our friends or maybe with others, comparing the progress we made, the wealth we have, the job we do, the success in our lives, careers, and many other things.
And guess what, most of the times, we’ll got disappointment instead. Why? We were born with different talents in different environment, sees things differently according to our priorities. The wise way to measure our growth is by comparing our present condition with our past time. Have we learn something since then? Have we become a better person? Am I healthier? Am I wiser?
The wining is not about defeating other people but defeating ourselves. Let’s make ourselves better everyday.
Author: Unknown