The Joneses

You no longer have to keep up with the Joneses...they've died of exhaustion.

~The Old Vermonter

A Hidden Fortune

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled up clay and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man so he took the bag out of the cave with him.

As he strolled along the beach, to pass the time, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could throw. He didn't think much about it until he dropped one of the balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone. Excited the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar valuable treasure.

He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left, and then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he just threw it away.

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and all we see is the external clay covering. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.  We may think of that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we if we take the time to look past the exterior, we can often find amazing treasures inside each person.