A man was exploring the caves by a seashore when he found a bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. The balls looked like someone had intentionally rolled the clay and left them out in the sun to bake. Perhaps some children made them for fun while they were at the beach, the man thought. They didn’t look much, but they intrigued the man so he took the bag out of the cave with him.
As he strolled along the beach, he threw the clay balls one by one out into the ocean as far as he could. The clay balls would fly and disappear into the ocean. The man threw several clay balls into the ocean until he dropped one of them and it cracked open. Inside the clay was a beautiful precious stone.
This excited the man and he started breaking the remaining clay balls. Each of them contained different types of precious stones. He found thousands of rupees worth of jewels in around 20 clay balls that were left with him. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach for a long time and he must have thrown away many clay balls with hidden treasure into the sea. He could have had a treasure worth tens of thousands rather than just thousands, if he had not thrown the clay balls away.
Most of the time we look at someone, or even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. The vessel doesn’t always look sparkly and nice, so we never bother to look inside it. We tend to see and judge a person and deem them as less important than the ones who are more beautiful, stylish, well-known or wealthy. We forget to look inside for the unique treasure that each one of us holds.
May we not come to the end of our lives and realise that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships, love or relationships because we did not attempt to look for the gems hidden in bits of clay. Let us all relish the treasures each of us hold inside us.
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Images of Australian postage stamps on gems issued in 2017 courtesy: https://thejewelerblog.wordpress.com/
What all four gems have in common is that they are housed in the mineral collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney.
