Self Reliance

In reading a magazine article recently I came across a story that outlined an article from the Reader’s Digest many, many years ago. It reads:

“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved… “

“The shrimpers had created a ‘Welfare State’ for the… sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.”

“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing lure’! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.”

“A lot of people are like that, too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government’s shrimp fleet. But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come?”

“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We… must preserve our talents of self sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence. “

Self reliance isn’t everything, if you believe that you will almost always miss the mark. However, it is an essential ingredient in finding more joy.