Ik heb zonet het boek ‘The 38 Letters form J.D. Rockefeller to his son” van J.D. Rockefeller in de bus gekregen.
Het was een impuls aankoop na een filmpje op Instagram of Facebook en de eerste brief die ik lees is deze Brief 17 met als korte inhoud:
Op 29 mei 1926 schrijft J.D. Rockefeller een brief aan zijn zoon John. Hij vertelt over een jonge man die hem heeft geschreven omdat deze rijk wil worden maar gebrek heeft aan kapitaal. Rockefeller deelt vervolgens een verhaal over een man genaamd Al Hafid, een rijke en tevreden Perzische landeigenaar. Op een dag vertelt een oude monnik hem over diamanten die hem nog rijker zouden maken. Gefascineerd verkoopt Al Hafid al zijn bezittingen om diamanten te zoeken in verre landen. Hij raakt al zijn geld kwijt en pleegt uiteindelijk zelfmoord bij Barcelona. Ironisch genoeg ontdekt de nieuwe eigenaar van zijn tuin later dat er diamanten in de beek op het landgoed lagen. Dit blijkt de beroemde Golconda diamantmijn te zijn, waaruit later de grootste diamanten ter wereld werden gedolven, waaronder diamanten voor de kronen van de Engelse koning en de Russische keizer.
Zoals de promoter van het boek op Instagram of Facebook vermelde: Verbazend hoe actueel de inhoud van deze brieven is alhoewel meer dan 100 jaar geleden geschreven.
hieronder de ganse brief.
May 29, 1926
Dear John:
Yesterday, just yesterday, I received a letter from a young man who aspire to become a rich man. In his letter, he urged me to answer a question: He is lacking capital, so how can he start a business and become rich?
My goodness, he wants me to show him the direction of his life, but teaching others does not seem to be my specialty, and I cannot refuse his sincerity, which is really painful. Still, I wrote back to him. Indeed, he needed capital, but what he needed more was common sense. Common sense is more important than money.
For a poor child who wants to start a business, they often suffer from lack of capital. If they fear failure, they will hesitate and move slowly like a snail, or even stop on the road to success, and never rise above others, so I specifically reminded him in my reply:
“From poverty, the road to prosperity is always unobstructed. The important thing is that you firmly believe that you are your greatest capital. You have to exercise your faith and keep exploring the reasons for your limitation until faith replaces doubt. You have to know that you can’t achieve what you don’t believe in; faith is the force that drives you forward.”
Everyone who desires success should realize that the seeds of success are sown by his side. As long as he recognizes this, he can get whatever he wants. In the letter, I narrated an Arab story to the young man and I believe this story will benefit others, and everyone.
The person who told me this story told me this:
There used to be a Persian, named Al Hafid, who lived not far from the Indus River. He owned a large orchid garden, hundreds of acres of fertile fields and prosperous gardens. He is a contented person and very rich – because he is rich, he is very contented with his life. One day, an old monk came to visit him and sat by his fireplace and said to him: “You are rich and you live a comfortable life, however, if you have a hand full of diamonds, you can buy the entire land in this country. And if you own a diamond mine, you can use the influence of this huge wealth to send your child straight to the throne.”
After hearing the tempting words of the old monk, Hafid went to bed that night. He became a poor man — not because he lost everything, but because he became dissatisfied, so he felt poor; and because he thought he was poor, he was not satisfied.
He thought: “I want a diamond mine.” So he could not sleep all night. Early the next morning he ran out to look for the monk.
The old monk was woken up early in the morning and was very unhappy. But Hafid did not care about it at all. He nonchalantly shook the old monk from his sleep and said to him: “Can you tell me where to find diamonds?”
“Diamonds? What do you want diamonds for?”
“I want to have greater wealth,” Hafid said, “and I do not know where to find diamonds.”
“Oh,” the old monk understood. He said, “At the mountains with a streaming river filled with white sand, there you will find the diamonds.”
“Do you really think it is in such a river?”
“There are so many, more than you think there is! You just have to go out and look for it, and you will definitely find it.”
“I will,” Hafid said.
So, he sold the farm, recoup the funds he loaned, gave the house to his neighbors, and set out to look for diamonds.
Hafid first went to the Moonlight Mountains to look for the diamonds, then to Palestine, then to Europe, and finally he spent all his money and became worthless. Standing on the coast of Barcelona, Spain, like a beggar, he saw a huge wave surging over the pillars of Hercules. This poor, painful creature could not resist the temptation to jump and fall from the peak and ended his life.
Soon after Hafid’s death, the heir to his property took the camel to the garden to drink water. When the camel stuck his nose into the clear and bottomless stream in the garden, the heir found the white sand which was gleaming in the shallow bottom of the stream. And emitting a strange light, he stretched out his hand and touched a black stone. There was a shiny spot on the stone that gave out rainbow-like colors. He took this weird stone into the house, put it on the shelf of the fireplace, and continued to work, completely forgetting about it.
A few days later, the old monk who told Hafid where to find the diamond came to visit Hafid’s heir. He saw the light from the stone on the shelf, rushed over immediately, and exclaimed in surprise:
“This is the diamond! This is the diamond! Did Hafid come back?”
“No, he hasn’t come back yet, and it’s not a diamond either, it is just a stone, which I found in my back garden.”
“Young man, you are rich! I know diamonds, these are really diamonds!”
So, they ran to the garden together and held them up with their hands. On the white sand at the bottom of the stream, many diamonds that were more beautiful and more valuable than the first one was found.
This is how people discovered the Golconda diamond mine in India. It is the largest diamond mine in human history, and its value far exceeds South Africa’s Kimberly. The large Cullinan diamond inlaid on the crown of the King of England and the world’s largest diamond inlaid on the crown of the Russian emperor were all mined from that diamond mine.
John, whenever I remember this story, I cannot help but sigh on behalf of Al Hafid. If Hafid stayed in his hometown and dug his own fields and gardens instead of looking in a foreign land, he would not have become a beggar, suffer from poverty and starvation, then jump into the sea and die. He already had the diamonds.
Not every story is meaningful, but this Arab story has brought me precious life lessons: your diamond is not between the distant mountains and the sea, if you are determined to dig, the diamond is in your backyard. The important thing is to sincerely believe in yourself.
Everyone has a certain ideal, which determines the direction of his efforts and judgment. In this sense, I think that a person who does not believe in himself and does not fully exert his abilities can not believe in himself and to be a person who steals from himself; and in the process, because he is running low on creativity, he is tantamount to stealing from society. Since no one will deliberately steal from themselves, those who steal from themselves obviously did so unintentionally. However, this crime is still very serious, because the damage it causes is as great as deliberate theft.
Only by quitting this kind of stealing from ourselves can we climb to the top. I hope that the young man who is eager to make a fortune can think about the teachings contained therein.
Love,
Your Father