SECOND CHANCE

When one loses his ‘first chance’, a ‘second chance’ remains within his reach. Through thoughtful consideration, one can seize new opportunities and achieve success.

A certain man was a manager in a company. He had a dispute with the company’s owner. The dispute kept mounting. It caused the manager grave mental stress and tension, so much so that he began contemplating suicide. Instead of trying to end the problem, he decided to end his own life, in the hope of thereby saving himself from the problem.

This man happened to meet me. I asked him why he wanted to commit suicide. The doors of life were open to him, so, what was the need to choose the door of death? I said that he had ostensibly lost only his ‘first chance.’ A ‘second chance’ was still available for him. I then suggested that he shift to some other city. On the basis of his abilities, he could get good opportunities elsewhere. After advising him thus, I penned these words in his diary: ‘Sometimes, a gardener plucks a plant in his garden from its place only so that he can plant it in some other, better place.’

The man accepted my advice, and, resigning from the company where he worked, went off to another city. There, he became engaged in business, and, compared to before, he was now in a far better position economically than before.

In every person’s life, a time comes when he experiences some sort of loss. People who consider a loss to be just a loss can, through new efforts, make themselves successful once again. On the other hand, people who consider loss to be permanent failure lose their courage and give up. They lack the will and determination to engage in any new action. Which of these two courses of action a person will adopt depends on his thinking. It is his way of thinking that makes a person fail or leads one towards success.