A young man wanted to marry a farmer's daughter. So he went to the farmer to ask his permission and the farmer looked at him and said, “son, go stand out in that field. I'm going to release three bulls, one at a time. If you can catch the tail of any one of the three bulls, you can marry my daughter."
The young man was excited because he knew he was fast and felt sure he would be able to catch the tail of a bull. So he stood in the pasture and waited for the first bull.
The barn door opened and out ran the biggest, meanest-looking bull he had ever seen. He was intimidated and decided that one of the next bulls had to be a better choice than this one. He ran over to the side and let the bull pass through the pasture out the back gate.
The barn door opened again. He was amazed! He had never seen anything so big and fierce in his life. He couldn’t have imagined a meaner bull and yet here it was. It stood pawing the ground, grunting, slinging slobber as it eyed him. Whatever the next bull was like, it had to be a better choice than this one. He ran to the fence and let the bull pass through the pasture, out the back gate.
The door opened a third time. The young man smiled immediately. This was the weakest, scrawniest little bull he had ever seen. This was his bull. As the bull came running by, he positioned himself just right and jumped at just the exact moment. He grabbed... but the bull had no tail!
The lesson is that life is full of opportunities but sometimes we don’t recognize them because we see them as challenges, so we pass them by in hopes of something better. When we do this, we run the risk of missing out altogether.
