An Inspirational Story

From time to time, we love to share inspirational stories which we hope you all find helpful.  Here is one today that we particularly like.

In a small Italian town, hundreds of years ago, there was a business owner who owed a large sum of money to a loan-shark.  The loan-shark was a very old, unattractive looking guy who just so happened to fancy the daughter of the business owner.

He decided to offer the business owner a deal that would completely wipe out the debt he owed him.  However, the catch was that it would only wipe out the debt if he could marry the business owner’s daughter.  Needless to say, this proposal was met with a look of disgust.

The loan-shark said that he would place two pebbles into a bag – one black one and one white one.  The daughter would then have to reach into the bag and pick one of the pebbles out.  If the pebble was black, the debt would be wiped out but the daughter would marry the loan-shark.  If it was white, the debt would also be wiped out but the daughter would not have to marry the loan-shark.

Standing on a pebble-strewn path in the business owner’s garden, the loan-shark bent down and picked up two pebbles. Whilst he was picking them up, the daughter noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and placed them both into the bag.

He then asked the daughter to reach into the bag and pick one.

The daughter, naturally, had three choices as to what she could do.

1.  Refuse to pick a pebble from the bag.

2.  Take both pebbles out of the bag and expose the loan-shark for cheating.

3.  Pick a pebble from the bag fully well knowing that it was black and sacrifice herself for her father’s freedom.

She drew out one pebble from the bag and before looking at it, “accidentally” dropped it into the midst of the other pebbles saying to the loan-shark, “Oh how clumsy of me.  Never mind, if you look into the bag and see which one is left in the bag, you will be able to tell which one I picked.”

The pebble left in the bag obviously was black and seeing that the loan-shark did not want to be exposed, he had to play along with the fact that the one the daughter dropped was the white one and therefore the debt was cleared and the daughter was free.

Moral of the story:  It is always possible to overcome a tough situation.

Thanks, wealthygorilla.com.

Love these inspirational stories and love, even more so, sharing them with you our chums!