I came across this metaphoric story and thought about chances…
The Sybilines, witches capable of foretelling the future, lived in ancient Rome. One fine day one of them appeared at Emperor Tiberius’ palace with nine books; she said that therein lay the future of the Empire, and asked for ten talents of gold for the texts. Tiberius found the price too high and refused to buy them.
The Sybiline left, burned three of the books and returned with the remaining six. "These cost ten talents of gold," she said. Tiberius laughed and told her to leave; how could she have the nerve to sell six books for the same price as nine?
The Sybiline burned another three books and went back to Tiberius with the only three remaining books: "They cost the same ten talents of gold." Intrigued, Tiberius ended up buying the three volumes and could only read a small part of the future.
In real life more often then we’d prefer it, we are Tiberiuses. We have our chances offered to us yet we evaluate them based not on whether we can afford to take them, but more on whether they can be of any use for us. The problem though…we never know unless we take this chance…a chance by definition is an alternative to what you already know. A chance is something unknown in advance. It seems strange to me that people often take a miss on a chance even when it doesn’t cost them too much. And I don’t mean money. Anything really, time, effort…when all the circumstances work for you, when all you have to do is – stretch your arms and take it. We ‘d rather draw a sketch of possible future in our mind and based on what we imagine, we choose not to take the chance…seems illogical to me – whatever your mind imagined what this chance might bring for you, you never know for sure. You make conclusions before it happens. And based on them, you let it pass by.…How often do we hear somebody saying “I wish I took my chance back then…”…we are wise with our “backward mind”. And sometimes as time goes by we are persistently offered the same kind of chance, but with a higher price for it to pay…and we may even wonder of why it is such a persistent apparition…and still not do anything… And one may argue that we are on the way we meant to be, with all the mistakes we supposed to make to learn whatever our karma has for us to learn…and maybe they’re right. But then – we never know unless we take a chance to paint our karma different .
The Sybilines, witches capable of foretelling the future, lived in ancient Rome. One fine day one of them appeared at Emperor Tiberius’ palace with nine books; she said that therein lay the future of the Empire, and asked for ten talents of gold for the texts. Tiberius found the price too high and refused to buy them.
The Sybiline left, burned three of the books and returned with the remaining six. "These cost ten talents of gold," she said. Tiberius laughed and told her to leave; how could she have the nerve to sell six books for the same price as nine?
The Sybiline burned another three books and went back to Tiberius with the only three remaining books: "They cost the same ten talents of gold." Intrigued, Tiberius ended up buying the three volumes and could only read a small part of the future.
In real life more often then we’d prefer it, we are Tiberiuses. We have our chances offered to us yet we evaluate them based not on whether we can afford to take them, but more on whether they can be of any use for us. The problem though…we never know unless we take this chance…a chance by definition is an alternative to what you already know. A chance is something unknown in advance. It seems strange to me that people often take a miss on a chance even when it doesn’t cost them too much. And I don’t mean money. Anything really, time, effort…when all the circumstances work for you, when all you have to do is – stretch your arms and take it. We ‘d rather draw a sketch of possible future in our mind and based on what we imagine, we choose not to take the chance…seems illogical to me – whatever your mind imagined what this chance might bring for you, you never know for sure. You make conclusions before it happens. And based on them, you let it pass by.…How often do we hear somebody saying “I wish I took my chance back then…”…we are wise with our “backward mind”. And sometimes as time goes by we are persistently offered the same kind of chance, but with a higher price for it to pay…and we may even wonder of why it is such a persistent apparition…and still not do anything… And one may argue that we are on the way we meant to be, with all the mistakes we supposed to make to learn whatever our karma has for us to learn…and maybe they’re right. But then – we never know unless we take a chance to paint our karma different .