School won’t teach you this. Life will, when attention is paid



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People don't change themselves. People LET themselves to be changed. However, a real change is one that you miss out on. A real change is when you meet a friend which you haven't seen for 10 years and he tells you you've changed a lot. He tells you that he had a whole different image of you in his mind.

And to make such a change is to allow yourself to go subconsciously at it. Trusting your own ingenuity. To do so, you must put your inner self on the edge of the threshold...

Here's a short Zen story to illustrate it:

The Art Of Burglary

The son of a master thief asked his father to teach him the secrets of the trade.

The old thief agreed and that night took his son to burglarize a large house.

While the family was asleep, he silently led his young apprentice into a room that contained a clothes closet. The father told his son to go into the closet to pick out some clothes. When he did, his father quickly shut the door and locked him in.

Then he went back outside, knocked loudly on the front door, thereby waking the family, and quickly slipped away before anyone saw him.

Hours later, his son returned home, bedraggled and exhausted.

"Father," he cried angrily, "Why did you lock me in that closet? If I hadn't been made desperate by my fear of getting caught, I never would have escaped. It took all my ingenuity to get out!"

The old thief smiled. "Son, you have had your first lesson in the art of burglary."

Efficiency Is Intelligent Laziness.



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There is a bigger story actually and it goes something like this:

A young man seeing thieves and rogue all about in an inn with wealth to spend decided he wanted to be just like them. And there was said to be an old man in town who was once a very successful thief. He soon found out that old man was the very same one sitting at the bar across the Inn.

The young man approached the old thief, posture straight and standing tall, and told the man, "I want to be a thief and I want you to teach me."

The old thief hardly batted an eye and had a simple smile upon his face. Looking at him one would hardly be able to surmise his past profession when compared to the mean, scarred cutthroats that also drank at the Inn that night. He spoke to would-be thief and asked, "So you wish to know what it is to be a thief?"

The young man nodded excitedly, catching himself so as to not look TOO excited. He wanted to be a professional after all.

The old man shrugged his shoulders and with that same smile told the boy, "Meet me at the mansion down the road when the moon is high overhead."

The boy nodded and quickly went away. His mind whirled with all th possibilities of things he would buy with his soon-to-be loot.

The moon was high overhead when the boy met with the old man at the gates of the mansion. With nary a word they moved on, climbing the wall and sticking to the shadows like vengeful kami in the night. Not a gurd spotted them, and even the breeze itself had nothing to deliver to their ears that eve. All the while the young man was a bit nervous and cautious, but he found that with old man teaching him there wasn't anyone that could find him.

Eventually they arrived at a simple room, yet no simple when one looked through the opened door, a simple thing to unlock a lock with skill like the old thief's. Statuettes, pictures, jewelry and more lined the shelves, a fortune waiting for the taking. And yet the old thief waggled a single finger ad the eager young man and soon pointed towards the ornate chest in the center of the room. The boy nodded his head back in reply, his mind moving furiously with thoughts of wealth beyond imagining.

The old man took but a few seconds to work at the difficulty lock, kneeling against the hardwood floor with a sureness from spending many a night in awkward, and sometimes painful, positions. ANd within moments a resounding -CLICK- ehoed thorugh the room like thunder. The boy nearly leapt from his skin both from anticipation and fear of the whole country hearing the lock opened. And it was but a second later the man leaned forward to peer into an opening from a lid barely lifted from its frame.

The young man was beckoned forward. The boy soon joined the thief in his kneeling, his knees were not fond of this profession so far. And he leaned closer.. closer ...and even closer still to peer into what could only be a chest full of gold and riches.

In a split second the old man moved faster than a serpent as he both opened the chest and then puched the boy fully within. And before the young man could respond the chest closed and locked with a resounding -CLICK-. And soon thereafter the old man lit a few of the, until recently, unlit torches upon the walls and then grasped his gourd of wine, took a swig, and then began to wander down the hallways singing happily.

Immediately the house was awake, alert, a commotion could be heard from all corners as guards and the lord of the house searched for this disturbance. All heard by the young man from within a locked chest. The old man must've never been found for even as the lord of the house bellowed at the useless guards for their incompetency they searched the treasury room. Not a single thing was missing.

Hours and hours must've passed and the only sound he could hear any more was the thunderous beating of his heart. His life was in peril, he just knew it, but he had to escape. And it was with that in mind he began to lightly tap at the lid of his prison.

A house servant, making her early morning rounds herd the sound and went to investigate. She opened the lid fearing one of the house cats had gotten locked inside somehow. Yet she was surprised and screamed in terror as the young man leaped out and made a mad dash out of the treasury room, down the many halls and corridors, out to the courtyard, where he stopped. Guards were on their way and he knew his life was forfeit.

He spotted a well and leapt into it, banging his head in the process and busting his lip open.

Hours and hours continued with guards rushing around, screams of house servants fearing for their lives, and a furious lord of the house ready to have each of the night guards killed.

Eventually things died down and the young man looked up see the old thief looking down and offering a hand to assist him. With that the boy was brought out, they escaped over the wall and when he thought it was safe he yelled and screamed at the old man.

The old man listened with hardly a change in his ever-present smile and nodded here and there as the young man told of his night of terror, fear, and confusion. And with a simple wink, and an even broader smile, he told the boy, "Now you know what it is like to be a thief."