Inspirational Short Story - The Perspective of Life

It's all about perspective. Is the glass half empty of half full? Read about a rich city man and his son and their trip to the farm. An inspirational short story with an important moral at the end.

One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
"It was great, Dad".
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah" said the son.
"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father. The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."
The boy's father was speechless.
Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are."
Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends!

Sharing is caring.

The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 5-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became even more upset when the child used the gold paper to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.
Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her father the next morning and said, This is for you Daddy. The father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box empty. He spoke to her in a harsh manner, Don’t you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there’s supposed to be something inside the package?
The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, Oh Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was full. The father was crushed. He fell on his knees and put his arms around his little girl and he begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger.
An accident took the life of the child only a short time later and it is told that the father kept that gold box by his bed for all the years of his life. And whenever he was discouraged or faced difficult problems, he would open the box and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each of us human beings have been given a golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family, friends and God. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.
You now have two choices…… you can:
1. Pass this on to your friends, or
2. Delete it and act like it didn’t touch your heart.
As you can see, I took choice No. 1.

“Apologizing does not mean that you are wrong and the other one is right.....
It simply means that you value the relationship much more than your EGO..”

Why learn English

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Learning to speak English well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life.

That's right. Do you think it would be fun to have access to information that other people can't get? Talk and write letters to interesting people that others can't communicate with? Impress people around you whenever you opened your mouth? Make big jumps in your career, leaving others miles behind?

You can get all this if you speak English well.

Get access to knowledge

What are you interested in? Is it science? Music? Computers? Health? Business? Sports? Today's media — such as the Internet, television, and the press — give you almost unlimited access to knowledge about your favorite subjects. After all, we live in the information age, don't we?

There's only one problem. Most of this knowledge is in English.

Here are some examples of knowledge you can use if you know English:

• Most pages on the Web. That's over a billion (1,000,000,000) pages of information! It's amazing that learning just one language gives you access to almost all knowledge on the Internet.
• Books — on any subject, from all over the world. Read books by British or American authors, and books translated from other languages. Whatever you're interested in, you can read about it in English!
• The press. Only English-language magazines and newspapers can be bought in every part of the world. You don't have to search for Time, Newsweek, or the International Herald Tribune!
• Science. English is the key to the world of science. In 1997, 95% of the articles in the Science Citation Index were written in English. Only about 50% of them were from English-speaking countries like the USA or Britain. (source)
• News reports. Watch international television networks, such as CNN International and NBC. They broadcast news much faster, and more professionally, than smaller, national networks. And you can watch them everywhere in the world.