An academically excellent person was being interviewed for a managerial post in a big company. The Director discovered from the CV, that the youth's academic result was excellent all the way. The Director asked, "Had you any scholarship in school?" The youth answered "No". The Director further asked, “How did you pay your School fees?" The youth answered, “My father is no more and it was my mother who earned for me.”The next question was, “Where does your mother work?" The youth answered, "My mother works as cloth cleaner." The Director looked at his eyes and then asked, “Have you ever helped your mother wash clothes?" The youth answered, “Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books, furthermore, my mother washes clothes faster than me" The Director then said, “I have a request, when you go back today, go and help to clean your mother's hand, and then see me tomorrow morning.”
The youth felt that the chance of landing the job was high and when he went back, he happily wanted to clean his mother's hands. His mother felt strange. With happiness mixed with fear, she showed her hands to the kid. The youth cleaned his mother's hands slowly and his tears fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mother's hands were so wrinkled, and that there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that she shuddered when his mother’s hands were cleaned with water. This was the first time that he realised and experienced that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes every day to earn him the school fees and that the bruises in the mother's hand were the price that his mother paid for his graduation and academic excellence and probably his future. After finishing the cleaning of his mother's hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.
That night, the mother and son talked for a very long time. Next morning, the youth went to the Director's office. The Director noticed the tear in the youth's eye and asked: "Can you tell me what you did and learnt yesterday in your house?"The youth answered, "I cleaned my mother's hands and also finished washing all the remaining clothes.” The Director asked, “please tell me what you felt." The youth said, "Now I know what she is in my life. Now I know how to work together with my mother. Only now do I realise how difficult and tough it is to get something done. Finally, I have learned the importance and value of family relationship.” The Director said, “I want to recruit a person that can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the suffering of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life to be my manager. You are appointed.”
This is just another story which I happened to read last month. Don’t know if the situation is real or fabricated. However, the moral is worth meditating upon. The difference between the young man without the cloth washer behind and with the cloth washer aside is great; the environments both might create around them are very critical to the continuance of the establishments concerned. Stories won’t help; only real experience matters. Eating meals thankfully remembering the Universe, which produced the food, the Nature that grew it, the men who cropped it, the woman who cooked it and all the contributing factors that caused it, is the best known process to extract the maximum energy from the minimum food we consume, according to Indian saints. The theory is the same with regard to the environment that feeds us financially too; being thankful to everything and everybody makes anyone best of the lot.
