A man asked his friend, Ken, for advice on a big problem that was bothering him. After talking with him, he saw his problem in a whole new light. Then he asked his friend, “Ken, you have a deep calmness and wisdom — where did you get it?”

Ken thought as moment, then opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small cardboard box. “The answer is in here.”

Then he explained: “I used to be the ‘wonder boy’ of Wall Street. Then the crash came and I lost everything. I was so devastated, I went down to the ocean and was going to take my life.

“When I reached the water, I looked down and saw something in the sand. It was white and sparkling. I bent over and picked it up. It’s what you see in this box.”

With that, Ken opened the box and inside was a beautiful, delicate seashell. It was so delicate that it was almost like tissue paper. “As I stood on the beach holding the shell,” Ken said, “I couldn’t understand how it didn’t break up in the big waves in the sea.”

“Then suddenly the answer came to me. It was because the shell had not fought against the sea and the waves. It had simply floated along with them and accepted them as facts of life.”

“That shell,” said Ken, “gave me a new insight into how to live. Instead of growing angry at life’s bad breaks, I should simply accept them as facts of life.”

What a lesson!

By the way, the shell is called Angel’s Wing.

God bless.