99 Club

Again, such emails serve as constant reminders for me ...
To share the summarised story I received this morning :

There lived a King who shld hv been contented with his life, given all the riches & luxuries he had. However, he found himself otherwise & still felt something was lacking.

One morning, he heard one of his servants singing & had a very contented look on his face. When asked why he was so happy, the servant replied, "Your majesty, I am nothing but a servant, but I make enough of a living to keep my wife & children happy. We don't need too much, a roof over our heads & warm food to fill our tummy. My wife & children are my inspiration, they are contented with whatever little I bring home. I am happy because they are happy."

Hearing this, the King dismissed the servant & summoned his Personal Assistant (PA) & relate the story. The PA listened attentively & came to a conclusion. He said, "Your Majesty, I believed the servant has not been made part of The 99 Club." He added, "To truly know what it is, you will have to place 99 gold coins in a bag & leave it at this servant's doorstep."

That evening, the King arranged for 99 gold coins to be placed in a bag & placed at the servant's doorstep, although he was slightly hesitant & thought he should have placed 100 gold coins into the bag ...

The servant was just stepping out of his house when he saw a bag at his doorstep. When he saw its contents, he let out a great shout of joy! He showed the coins to his wife & together they counted the coins. Doing so, he realised that there were 99 coins & he thought it was an odd number. He counted again & again but only come to the same conclusion - 99 gold coins!

He began to wonder what could have happened to that last 1 gold coin? He began to search his entire house, looked in his backyard, not wanting to lose out on that 1 coin. Finally, exhausted, he decided that he was going to have to work harer than ever to make up for that 1 gold coin to make his entire collection an even 100 gold coins!

He got up the next day, in a horrible mood, shouting at his wife & children, not realising that he had spent most of the night conjuring ways of working hard so that he had $ to buy 1 gold coin. He went to work as usual - only not singing nor in his usual best mood - as he grumpily did his errands.

Seeing the drastic change, the King summoned his PA. The King thought that the servant shld hv been happier after receiving the gold coins but the PA explained, " The servant has now officially joined The 99 Club. The name is given to peopl who hv everything but yet are never contented, therefore they are always working hard & striving for that extra 1 to round it up to 100! We hv so much to be thankful for & we can live with very little in our lives, but the minute we are given something bigger & better, we want even more & most of the time don't realise the price we pay for it. We lose our sleep, our happiness; we hurt people ard us - for our growing needs & desires. That is what joining The 99 Club is all about."

Moral of the Story :
Striving for more is always good but let's not strive so hard & for so much that we lose all those near & dear to our hearts. We should not compromise our happiness for moments of luxuries!

Take care my friends ...