The Chinese Kid

Once upon a time, in a village lived a Chinese kid. He was 12 years old and lived the life of a poor common farmer.

One day, he went strolling into the woods in the afternoon. He walked and walked, listening to the sound of the stream and the bird chirping. Suddenly, he stepped on something hard.

He looked down, to see a shiny rock. It was about the size of his fist. He brought it up to the sunlight and everything that he could see about it was beautiful. He was very happy that he found that rock, and ran around throwing it in the air, and catching it again.

When he reached a riverbank, he thought "how nice would it be to see the rock fly through the air in the sunlight?" And he threw the rock as hard as he could across the river. The rock shone as it flew across the air, streams of rainbows flying out of every flat side it had. The rock landed on the other side of the river. The experience of seeing it fly was great, but the kid knew, there was no way he was ever going to cross the river to get it again.

As the boy grew up, his parent's farm got poorer and poorer. He desperately needed a way to get his family out of the heavy debt they were in. On the day he turned 18, he read in a book about the hardest rock that exists. It was called -- diamond. Its description caught his eyes, he remembered seeing something like it, but not remembering where. As he read on to find out about diamond's rareness and value, he remembered the time when he was 12, and the rock that he found in the forest.

He threw down the book and ran to the riverbank he threw the rock. He looked across to the other side of the river, somewhere he had never been before. He could still see the glittering rock lying where he had left it 6 years ago. Nobody had walked across it and picked it up. He knew that the rock could save his family from the financial problems they had. He knew the rock could change his life. Yet, because he did not see its value 6 years ago, it is out of his reach now.

He took off his shirt, and prepared to dive in to quick streaming current, possibly going to risk his life doing so. There was about 30 meters of water for him to swim through, but the main problem was the speed the current was traveling at.

He jumped into the water to find it surprisingly deep. He knew he could not swim through and survive it, so he climbed back up, feeling guilty that he was giving up something that could save his family's farm.

And so, everyday, he would go to the riverbank at 9 in the morning to look at the diamond, imagining how his life would be if he had taken the diamond home when he was 12. The reflection of the morning sunlight from the diamond would always give him hope. Yet he knew, there was nothing he could do but to wait and hope that another 12 year old kid, would find the diamond, then throw it across the river once again. He had no power to control what would happen, all he could do was wait.