A chauffeur worked for a woman who liked to take her cat with her on errands.
During one trip, the uniformed driver dropped her at a shopping mall before refueling. The cat remained in the car, lounging on top of the limousine's back seat.
The confused service station attendant stole several glances at the feline passenger relaxing in back. Finally, he asked: "Sir, is that cat someone important?"
I don’t know about the cat, but I’ve wasted too many years not feeling especially important. Not that I am or ever have been any more important than anybody else. But my low self esteem as a child and young adult always had me wishing I could measure up to others. I failed to see who I really was and struggled to become the person I felt I could be.
The following story reminds me how important a healthy self-image really is:
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eagle hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he thrashed his wings and flew a few feet in the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong, golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.”
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that is what he thought he was. (Author unknown)
You and I were meant for the skies – not the chicken coop. Who will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself?
-- Steve Goodier
Image: freeimages.com/Niall Crotty
