Once upon a time, a very rich merchant was standing at the window of his huge palace. He was very worried and sad because his business was not going well. Then his eyes fell on a poor cobbler living on the roadside just below the window. The cobbler was wearing tattered clothes, but he was singing very loudly and had a wonderful smile on his face while sewing the shoes. The businessman was very surprised. He thought, “I have so much wealth, palace and servants, yet I am troubled. This man has nothing, yet how is he so happy?”
The merchant hatched a plan to find out the secret of the cobbler’s happiness. He secretly put 100 gold coins in a bag and kept it outside the cobbler’s hut in the dark of night. When the cobbler found the bag the next morning, his happiness knew no bounds. He had never seen so much wealth. The total number of coins he counted was 99 (the merchant had deliberately kept one less).
The cobbler thought, “If we get just one more coin, the total will be 100.” Now the cobbler’s behavior completely changed. In his greed to earn that one coin, he started working day and night. He no longer sang songs, nor did he talk laughingly to anyone. He began to fear that someone might steal his coins. He would stay up late at night and be stressed all the time.
After a few days the businessman again looked through the window. The cobbler had now become thin, the smile on his face was missing and he was irritable every moment. The businessman understood that the cobbler was trapped in the ’99 cycle’. The gist of this story is that we often run after the things we don’t have (that 100th seal) and in the process we forget to enjoy the things we already have. Happiness does not lie in external possessions, but in contentment of the mind. -Pramod Srivastava
