I made up
this story and told this to my daughter and my nephew and niece the other day. The
story goes like this: One day, the Pharaoh decided to build a pyramid and not
just an ordinary pyramid. The Pharaoh wanted to build the biggest, the tallest
and the most beautiful pyramid ever and with that, the Pharaoh called in the
Master Mason and ordered him to build him the biggest, the tallest and the most
beautiful pyramid ever and to finish it as soon as humanly possible. And so,
the Master Mason wasted no time and started to design and build the pyramid. During
the building of the pyramid, the Master Mason set out and discovered a huge
sturdy boulder and he brought it to his workshop beside the rising pyramid and
he broke the giant boulder into two halves and left it there for the night. The
two halves of the boulder “speak” to each other that night.
The first
half asked the second half: “Hey brother, you know what they’re going to do to
us?”
The second
one replied: “I heard that they are going to make a pyramid and fashion one of
us into the TOP STONE while the remaining one will be the FOOT STONE.”
“I see,
what you want to be, brother?” asked the first one.
“The Top
Stone of course! What else should I be?” replied the first.
“But why?” came
the quick question.
“Why,
without the Top Stone, there will be no pyramid!”
“How come?”
“How come?!
When people look up at the pyramid and shouted to others, look! It’s the pyramid.
They all be pointing their fingers at the top of the pyramid where the Top
Stone lay, nobody would be pointing at the base of the pyramid and say, there’s
the pyramid!” “The Top Stone is the crowning glory of the pyramid and without the
triangular top, there will be no pyramid at all!” “Besides, there can only be one
Top Stone and hence, that stone would be unique of all the stones that made up
the pyramid and that is why, I wanted to be the Top Stone.”
The first
went silent for a while and said: “Well, I just wanted to be something useful
and to do great things, Top Stone or not. It doesn’t matter.”
“Really? It
doesn’t matter?”
“Well,
yeah, though the Top Stone is important and glamorous, without the Foot Stone
to support it at the top. The Top Stone will fall. Though there are many of us
Foot Stones that made up the pyramid, miss one Foot Stone and the whole pyramid
would collapse.”
“Yeah sure,
to each their dream.” Said the second stone.
The next
day, the Master Mason came and fashion the second half of the boulder into the
Top Stone that it desired to be while made a Foot Stone out of the first.
Both stones
lay at the work site for many years waiting for their appointed time to become part
of what is shaping up to be a grand edifice. Then suddenly, the Pharaoh
abandoned the project all together and both stone lay in the dessert almost
forgotten. Then one day, a new Pharaoh came to the throne and decided to build
a bridge over a raging river and called the by now aging Master Mason to do the
task. The Master Mason went to his old workshop and found both the Top Stone
and the Foot Stone on the ground. The Master Mason found that the Top Stone not
suitable for the project at hand because of its triangular shape and picked the
Foot Stone instead and placed the latter as the foundation stone at the bottom
of the river holding up the bridge and for countless years thereafter, the Foot
Stone silently toiled, holding up the bridge and allowing many to cross the
river safely. The Foot Stone realizes his dream of being something useful and
do great things but nobody knew nor cared whereas the Top Stone was lost
somewhere in the dessert buried in sand….
I told the
kids that someday when they grow up, they should decide whether they would wanted
to be the Top Stone or the Foot Stone and it is their choice to make… Be a Top
Stone, lavished with praise with all the glamor that being on top but they had
succeed in their endeavor against all odds and fierce competition lest they
will be forgotten (the unfinished pyramid) or be the Foot Stone, doing
important things but largely unknown, unsung, unheard of.
But guess
what? They don’t understand what I’m saying. Not yet.
