Who Would like This Twenty-Dollar Bill?

Cassan said Amer tells the story of a lecture who began a seminar by holding up a twenty-dollar bill and asking: “Who would like this twenty-dollar bill?”

Several hand went up, but the lecturer said: ‘Before I give it to you, I have to do something.”

He screwed it up into a ball and said: “Who still wants this bill?”

The hands went up again.
“And what if I do this to it?”

He threw the crumpled bill at the wall, dropped it into the floor, insulted it, trampled on it, and once more showed them the bill – now all creased and dirty. He repeated the question, and the hands stayed up.

“Never forget this scene,“ he said. “It doesn’t matter what I do to this money. It is still a twenty-dollar bill. So often in our lives, we are crumpled, trampled, ill-treated, insulted, and yet, despite all that, we are still worth the same.”



source: Like The Flowing River, Paulo Coelho