Love who you really are

Once upon a time there was a stonecutter. Every day he went into the mountains to hew stones from the rocks. While working, the stonecutter always sang merrily as he was happy with his life, he had plenty to eat and no worries.

One day he had to drop a load of stones at the villa of a very wealthy man. When he saw the beautiful house, an agonizing yearning came over him for the first time in his life. ‘How I would love to be that rich’, he sighed. ‘Then I wouldn’t have to sweat like this anymore to earn my keep.’ He was absolutely amazed when he heard a voice say, ‘Your wish will be fulfilled, from now on you will get what you long for.’
Naturally, the stonecutter did not know what to make of this.

Had he been dreaming? But when he came home that afternoon he saw a beautiful villa on the spot where his old hut had always been. The stonecutter gave up working and started to live the high life. One muggy afternoon he looked out of the window and saw the king drive by in his magnificent carriage and he mumbled, ‘How I would love to be the king, then I would be in that cool carriage now.’ At once, his wish came true. But it was a lot warmer in the carriage than he thought it would be. He looked out of the window and was amazed by the intensity of the sun’s rays, which even seemed to break through the carriage’s thick walls. ‘If only I were the sun….’ he sighed. Once again his wish came true. And now he sent waves of heat into the universe. For a while he had no further wishes. But one rainy day he tried in vain to break through a thick blanket of cloud and he wished to be a cloud with the power to stop the sun. And so he became a cloud. And after a while he turned into rain. He fell on the earth and flowed down a hill until a massive boulder forced him to go a different way. ‘What?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is a rock like this more powerful than I am? Fine, then I wish to be a rock!’

And so there he was, on the mountainside, being a rock. He hardly had time to rejoice about his new shape, when he suddenly heard a cracking sound coming from somewhere below. He looked down and to his great horror saw a man hacking pieces off him.
‘What?! That man is stronger than I am….!?’

So he turned back into a stonecutter who went into the mountains hewing stone, under the hot sun and in the pouring rain, but always with a song on his lips as he was happy with what he had and what he was.