His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer.
One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry
for help coming from a nearby bog.
He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.There, mired to his waist in
black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free
himself.
Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and
terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse
surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced
himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.
“I want to repay you,” said the nobleman. “You saved my son’s life.”
”No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,” the Scottish farmer
replied waving off the offer.
At that moment, the farmer’s own son came to the door of the family hovel.
“Is that your son?'”the nobleman asked.
“Yes,” the farmer replied proudly.
“I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of
education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his
father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of”.
And that he did. Farmer Fleming’s son attended the very best schools
and in time, graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in
London , and went on to become known throughout the world as the
noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog
was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time?
Penicillin. And the name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill
… His son’s name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Category: Stories
There was once a kingdom which was renowned for the excellence of its mapmakers. Such was the accuracy, detail and beauty of their maps that each time you looked at one you would discover something new.
One day the Guild of Cartographers came to the king and presented their proposal for the ultimate map of the kingdom – a map that would show not only rivers and towns, political boundaries and forests, but heights above sea level, languages spoken, geological composition of the earth, animal and plant species, prevailing winds, predominant religions, rainfall levels, trades and industries, average temperatures, the migrations of birds…
The king, appreciative of their skill and knowledge, and mindful of how the map would secure the prestige of the kingdom, gave them a huge chest of gold to fund the project.
Some centuries later (for the project took longer than expected, as the inevitable changes in the kingdom had to be redrawn into the map), the descendants of the Cartographers’ Guild came to the then king, a distant descendant of the first one, with their finished map.
“Right,” said the king, “unroll it on the banqueting table and let’s have a look.”
“Sorry sire,” said the mapmakers, “in order to accommodate all the detail we’ve had to make it a very large-scale map, and it’s too big to unroll on the table.”
“Fine,” said the king, “you courtiers move the table out of the way and we’ll unroll it on the throne room floor.”
“I am afraid, sire,” said the head of the Cartographer’s Guild, “to show all of the parish boundaries, family ties, varieties of fruit grown, and mineral deposits – not to mention the one-way streets and the historic monuments – we’ve had to make it on too large a scale for the throne room to accommodate it.”
“Right,” said the king, beginning to get a little tetchy, “we’ll clear the soldiers from the parade ground outside and they can unroll it.”
“Sire, we had to make it on a very big scale to accurately capture all the detail – I’m afraid there will not be sufficient room on the parade ground.”
“Well what scale is it man?” roared the king. “One in a thousand, one in five hundred, what?”
“Errm… In order to accommodate all the detail, we had to make it… one to one scale, sire.”
… and to this day, if you visit the desert where the kingdom used to be, you can still see tattered scraps of the ultimate map blowing in the desolate breeze.
A man was using a rusted axe to cut a huge oak tree.
A friend was passing by and saw that the man was make no progress at all. At this rate it would take him years to chop the mighty tree down.
He said, “why don’t you sharpen your axe?” The man replied, “I can’t afford the time. Must cut this tree by tomorrow.”
Now when I arrived in Michigan at Wayne County Hospital I encountered a most unusual person. A young girl, medical technician, rather pretty, well-formed except she had the biggest, HUGEST fanny I had ever seen on any girl. And when she walked down the corridor I noticed that when she passed somebody she’d swing her fanny angrily toward that person. Well that interested me. So I made it a point to keep an eye open ’cause I wanted to see what that girl is going to DO with that great big fanny of hers. And I noticed that every visiting day was her day off and at the entrance of the grounds she met the mothers and their children . . . always asked the mother if she could give the children a piece of gum, a piece of candy, a toy, and volunteered to take care of the children while . the mother visited the patient. And for a whole year that went on. That seemed to be her entire life, looking after those visitor children, and she gave every evidence of making that her one and only joy in life. So that gave me ANOTHER idea about her. Then one day she suddenly developed the hiccups. She hiccupped night and day. We had a staff of 169 physicians, they all examined her and could find nothing wrong with her and they finally told her she would have to have a psychiatrist consultation. She knew what THAT meant. I’d be the psychiatrist called in and she politely refused to have a psychiatrist called in. So, she was informed she was being hospitalized in Wayne County Hospital for free and receiving her pay, “you’re paid even though you’re not working, everything is being taken care of for you as if you were fully employed. If you’re not going to take medical advice just resign your position, call a private ambulance and go to a private hospital and get over the hiccups there!” She thought that over and said she’d permit me to see her. So at two o’clock that afternoon I walked into her room, closed the door behind me, and said, “Keep your mouth shut! Listen! I’ve got a few things to say to you and I want you to listen ’cause you need an understanding. I KNOW you’ve got the biggest fanny in creation. I KNOW you don’t like it but it IS yours. And you like children, therefore you’d like to get married, have children of your own. And you’re afraid that great big fanny of yours is a barrier . . . that’s your error. You haven’t read the Song of Solomon. You SHOULD have read your bible. The pelvis is mentioned as the cradle of children.” I said, “The man who will want to marry you will not see a great big fat fanny . . . he’ll see a wonderful cradle for children.” She listened quietly. “Men who want to father children DO want a nice cradle for the child.” And when I finished my speech I said, “You can think it over. After I leave keep on hiccupping. There is no reason for anybody except you and I to know you don’t NEED those hiccups. You have something of great VALUE so let your hiccups disappear around 10:30 tonight, 11 o’clock, that way nobody will say a psychiatrist cured you, that my interview was an utter failure.” So her hiccups disappeared around that time. She went back to work and one day at lunch time while my secretary was having lunch she came into my office and said, “Here is something I want you to see.” She showed me her engagement ring. She said, “I thought you should be the first person to see this.” Sometime later she privately brought a young man into the office to meet me—her fiance. They were married shortly and started raising a family. Now reorientation of thinking … I called her fanny a great big fat fanny, as big as I had ever seen. I told her she hated it, but she didn’t understand it. Then I presented it as a cradle for children against my background of knowing how much she liked ^children. And how a man who would want to father children WOULD want a nice cradle for children. Now I didn’t need to go into the past, I could just discuss the current state of affairs . . . reorienting her thinking, reorienting her thinking in accord with her own secret desires. I was unafraid to call her fanny a big fat fanny, so she knew I was telling the truth, so she could believe what I said. I don’t like doctors who pussyfoot around and try to say things sweetly and gently. The truth should be told simply, straight-forward fashion because that is the ONLY way the patient is actually going to absorb therapy and proceed to benefit. And once you get them reoriented, their nose pointed down the road, they’ll go.
Sometimes we wonder how people re-act in some circumstances. We even got angry because they won’t listen to us no matter what we say.
People just stick to their beliefs, we can not blame them; unless we get into one’s shoes , it is only then we can comprehend why ” one ” acts the way they are. Self limiting belief is a complicated and difficult aspect of person’s personality.
It is so easy to say , ” Ok, I’ll change ! Promise. … ” consciously this might be possible, but unless one understand and accept the reason of changing subconsciously, Changes will always remain superficial which means the person has the tendency to go back to its former beliefs , habits and understanding.
It is like painting an old car with new paint. If you apply the new paint on top of the old paint , the ” car will become new and beautiful, but not long enough to remain that way .
Why? because it didn’t go to process of painting.
In time the superficial paint will wear-off and expose the original color of the car.
Whereas , A professional car painter, will first remove the old paint , repair old dents by applying coat etc , buffer it and apply the new paint. After all the process is done, the car is good as new.
It is the same with a person. Unless we go deeper and extract the root cause of how and why the person acts the way way they are in present , it is impossible to alter personality or whatever they wanted to change in their life.
A man on a street had a really bad headache and was clearly in pain when two women walking by stopped to see if they can help.
The first woman said “I can help you, but first we need to get to the core issues underlying the headache. It’s clear that you’re suffering from stress or a chemical imbalance, and there is no point just addressing the symptom without getting to this core issue. However, the man simple groaned and says that he is in pain and he doesn’t want to think about anything else.
The second woman stepped up to the man and opened her purse. “Here, take this aspirin”, she said. In just a few minutes, the pill started to take effect and the man looked visibly better and thanked the woman profusely. Then the second woman said, “now that you feel better, would you like to take the time to talk about anything that may be causing this headache. That will help you avoid having pain like this in the future. The man readily agreed.
I looked at the moon through the tall buildings of the city. And the moon looked back at me, not a full moon – just a crescent – and the beauty of that moon in the center of the city lifted my spirits for a few moments before the reality of the ugly buildings returned to my mind.
Yes, moon, I can see you. You’re a beautiful thing in the middle of all this barren concrete, but you are so away from it all, and I am stuck right in the middle of it.
And the moon looked back at me and spoke gently.
The difference between you and me is indeed one of perception, but perhaps not one of distance because I am just as far from you as you are from me. And perhaps I see the ugliness of the city as much as you because I can see it as it spreads its cold concrete upon the earth.
Rather than distance, we differ in another way; you see only the bright side of me – the face that I show to the world illuminated by the sun and full of beauty. Yet I know and accept that a full half of me is hidden in darkness from you. I accept that dark half of me because it is part of who I am.
You, too, have a dark half and you try to learn more, to see further, so that you can push the darkness away from yourself. But just like me, the darkness is a part of who you are. You can adventure in the darkness and try to extend your light, but as you extend your light you will find that you also expand your darkness. As knowledge and understanding grows, so its shadow grows alongside.
I still did not understand and asked the moon “And should I then simply live in the darkness for it shall always be part of me?” The moon replied:
As you grow and learn, the things that you do not know and understand will grow alongside. But the world cannot see your darkness anymore than it can see mine. Although your dark side is an invitation to learn more and to expand your wisdom, it is your growing light that shines. You shall always be half in darkness, but you shall truly be a greater light for the world.
A passerby saw me gazing and talking to the moon and muttered “another beautiful moon and beautiful lunatic.”
At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), I cheerfully asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very good. He’d had his wisdom teeth extracted. The young man then proceeded to ask me why I always seemed to be so cheerful. His question reminded me of something I’d read somewhere before: “Every morning when you get up, you have a choice about how you want to approach life that day,” I said to the young man. “I choose to be cheerful”. “Let me give you an example,” I continued.
The other sixty students in the class ceased their chatter and began to listen to our conversation. “In addition to teaching here at UNLV, I also teach out at the community college in Henderson, about seventeen miles down the freeway from where I live. One day a few weeks ago I drove those seventeen miles to Henderson. I exited the freeway and turned onto College Drive. I only had to drive another quarter-mile down the road to the college. But just then my car died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. So I put my flashers on, grabbed my books, and marched down the road to the college.
“As soon as I got there I called AAA and asked them to send a tow truck. The secretary in the Provost’s office asked me what had happened. ‘This is my lucky day,’ I replied, smiling. “‘Your car breaks down and today is your lucky day?’ She was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
“‘I live seventeen miles from here.’ I replied. ‘My car could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn’t. Instead, it broke down in the perfect place: off the freeway, within walking distance of here. I’m still able to teach my class, and I’ve been able to arrange for the tow truck to meet me after class. If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn’t have been arranged in a more convenient fashion.’ “The secretary’s eyes opened wide, and then she smiled. I smiled back and headed for class.” So ended my story to the students in my economics class at UNLV.
I scanned the sixty faces in the lecture hall. Despite the early hour, no one seemed to be asleep. Somehow, my story had touched them. Or maybe it wasn’t the story at all. In fact, it had all started with a student’s observation that I was cheerful. A wise man once said, “Who you are speaks louder to me than anything you can say.” I suppose it must be so.
The therapist drove to his office on a Monday morning feeling the burden of his work weighing heavily on him. The week before had been particularly tiring and he knew his diary was full for today and for the early part of the week ahead. With a heavy heart he stopped to buy petrol and as he went to pay the attendant gave him a cheery smile and wished him a good day. He drove on reflecting that in that one simple gesture the man at the garage might have made as much difference as he did to his clients in an hour of therapy. Suddenly a simple job involving routine but friendly contact with people seemed very attractive.
He arrived at his office thinking about the lack of purpose in his life to find his first appointment was a new client for a first session.
To his standard first question of “How can I help?” came the reply, “Well, I think I’m wasting my life, I serve people in a garage and I can’t stand the monotony and lack of human contact”
“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” asks the tourist of the New York cab driver.
“Practice, baby, practice” he replies. (Very old joke)