Sometimes you already have it all….

The beach in Mexico was warm as we walked along the shore with our friends. We could see the fishing fleet on the horizon with the exception of one small boat coming into the shore. It pulled up on the shore and one man got out with his catch. The men in our party walked over to look at the catch and the man in the boat offered to sell us three of the four fish he had. The couple we were with pointed out our party would need four fish. The man said only 3 fish were for sale. His family needed the other fish and he was done working for the day.
The salesman in our group immediately saw an opportunity.
“So, how long do you work every day and what do you do when you are not working?” he asked.
“About 4 hours, I go out before dawn and come back when I have four fish. It’s usually about 10 in the morning.” Our fisherman continued. “I will take the three fish to the market and take one home for my family. Then I will play with my children while my wife prepares the fish, when she is done we will take a siesta together. After the siesta, I will play with the children while she finishes dinner. After dinner, I walk into town and drink tequila with my friends. I walk home and sleep until morning when I go fishing. It is a good life.”
I could see the wheels smoking in my friend’s brain. He waited a few minutes and then burst out, “Just think, if you did fish all day, you would soon have the money to buy a bigger boat and hire other men to fish for you.”
“Why would I do that? What would I do if other men fished for me?”
“You would supervise them and with all that fish, you could sell not to the village but to the cannery and that would earn you even more money. If you saved that, you could build a cannery here in town and provide jobs for everyone in the village.”
“I can see that could help my neighbors but what would I do with a cannery?”
If you had a cannery, you could contract with distributors to take your products to the US and then you would make even more money and could become a distributor and move your family to the United States.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Well in the US, you could expand your distribution networks until you had millions of dollars and could retire a rich man.”
“What would I do then?”
“Whatever you wanted,” shouted my worked up friend.
“What I want is a small home in Mexico, a fishing boat, time to play with my children, siesta with my wife, and drink with my friends.”
“You could do that when you retire.”
“gringo loco,” said the man as he walked off with the four fish, “All that work just to do what I do now.”

Posted by shondratasha on January 23, 2006

https://shondratasha.wordpress.com/2006/01/23/sometimes-you-already-have-it-all/