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People are always blaming their circumstances for
what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for
the circumstances they want and, if they can't find them, make them. -George Bernard Shaw
Around the turn of the century
(1900) a man called Russel Conwell wrote an essay based on a true story that was so effective that he was asked to retell
it to hundreds of audiences. It was called "ACRES OF DIAMONDS" and it went something like this:
There was an old
African farmer who had done extremely well in life and one day he became very excited in hearing about people who had gone
off into Africa and discovered diamond mines. So he decided to sell his farm and go off into Africa to crown his life by finding
a diamond mine and becoming fabulously wealthy. He wandered the vast African continent for many years and finally broke, alone,
sick, and exhausted he threw himself into the ocean and drowned. Meanwhile back on his farm the new farmer was out one day
watering a mule in a stream that cut across the farm and he found a rock that threw off light in a remarkable fashion. It
was later found to be a diamond of great value. The person who had identified it as a diamond asked the farmer to take him
back and show him where he had found it. He took him back out to the place where he had been watering the mule and they found
another, and then they found another, and another and another. They found that the whole farm was literally covered with acres
of diamonds. The old farmer had gone off seeking diamonds somewhere else without ever looking under his own feet in his own
backyard. You see, diamonds in their rough form just simply look like rough rocks, burnt fragments and charred remnants of
coal. But a diamond in order to become a diamond must be cut and shaped and polished and set in order to bring out its very
best value.
Are you at this very moment living your life amidst "acres of diamonds"?
If your daily life
seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. -Rainer
Marie Rilke
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