[Motivation] Perspective

A business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out.
Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment.
He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save
his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him.

"I can see that something is troubling you," he said.
After listening to the executive's woes, the old man said,
"I believe I can help you." He asked the man his name,
wrote out a cheque, and pushed it into his hand saying,

"Take this money. meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can
pay me back at that time."
Then, he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a cheque for $500,000, signed
by John D.Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!

"I can erase my money worries in an instant!" he realized.

Nonetheless, the executive decided to put the cheque in his safe first.
Just knowing it was there, would give him the strength to work
out a way to save his business, he thought.

With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and got extended terms
of payment from creditors.

Soon he could close some big sales. Within a few months, he
was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly a year later, he returned to the park with that uncashed
cheque. The old man did not appear for some time; yet, the business
executive decided to wait for a while more.

A while later the old man came along the way but seemed to be unmindful
of the business executive. He stopped the old man and was about to hand
over the
cheque, with words of thanks, as well as to share his success story.

At the same time, he saw a nurse come running up and grabbing the old
man. "I'm so glad I caught him!" she cried. "I hope he hasn't been
bothering you. He's always escaping from the rest home and telling
people he's John D. Rockefeller." And she led the old man away by the arm.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he'd
been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a
million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined,
that had turned his life around.

It was his new found confidence that gave him the power to achieve
anything he went after. It was HOPE . Hope given by a passerby.

"Our duty is to encourage anyone in his struggle to live up to his
own highest idea, and strive at the same time, to make the ideal as
near as possible to the truth" - Swami Vivekananda

The role of the passerby s, all that one encounters is key to give that
Hope - a glimpse of what could be.

For a life lived where the past looks better than the future is a life
lived without HOPE

Its all about perspectives!