"How Much On Auto-Pilot Is Your Life Being Lived?"

The Touchstone
By: Unknown Author

When the great library of Alexandria burned, the story
goes, one book was saved. But it was not a valuable book;
and so a poor man, who could read a little, bought it for a
few coppers.

The book wasn't very interesting, but between its pages
there was something very interesting indeed. It was a thin
strip of vellum on which was written the secret of the
"Touchstone"!

The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any
common metal into pure gold. The writing explained that it
was lying among thousands and thousands of other pebbles
that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this: The
real stone would feel warm, while ordinary pebbles are
cold.

So the man sold his few belongings, bought some simple
supplies, camped on the seashore, and began testing
pebbles.

He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw
them down again because they were cold, he might pick up
the same pebble hundreds of times. So, when he felt one
that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a whole
day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet he
went on and on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold - throw it
into the sea. Pick up another. Throw it into the sea.

The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months.
One day, however, about midafternoon, he picked up a pebble
and it was warm. He threw it into the sea before he
realized what he had done. He had formed such a strong
habit of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the
one he wanted came along, he still threw it away.

So it is with opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it's
easy to fail to recognize an opportunity when it is in hand
and it's just as easy to throw it away.