Building Life

opportunity, don’t get discouraged. Instead, wait patiently for the second chance. If you do this, the second opportunity will surely come, and the success that slipped away in the first attempt will likely be yours the second time. The world is full of opportunities. After every missed chance, another one appears, just like a bright morning follows a dark evening. PAST AND PRESENT A father owned a fertile piece of land. He planted some seeds and told his sons, “I may not live to see it, but twenty years from now, you will see an orchard of fruit-bearing trees here and benefit from it.” After twenty years, the sons looked at the land and saw only a barren field. There were neither trees nor fruit. The sons investigated and discovered that their father mistakenly believed pieces of rock were seeds. The father had watered the land and sprinkled something, but they were not seeds; they were pieces of rock. Clearly, an orchard grows from seeds, not from pieces of rock. If you observe a nation whose leaders, for a hundred years, have organized grand movements, spoken beautiful words, and given the people great hopes, but now the country is falling into ruin, you will see that none of its affairs are well ordered. From any perspective, it lacks the solid foundation on which nations stand.