When your why is big enough, you will find your how.
— Les Brown
In the Wat Traimit Temple in Bangkok, Thailand sits a beautiful statue of Buddha. This statue is 10 feet tall, 10 feet wide and weighs five and a half tons.
It is made of solid gold. It is believed that the Golden Buddha was made sometime in the 13th or 14th centuries. This statue is one of a kind and while the value of the gold it contains is over 250 million dollars, its age and history make it a priceless treasure. But the true value of the Golden Buddha was not always so clear.
In 1767 the Burmese army invaded what is now Thailand. The army was destroying and looting all the temples they encountered. The monks expected the Burmese army would steal or destroy the Golden Buddha. To save the Golden Buddha, the monks covered it in stucco inlaid with pieces of colored glass to disguise its true value. Their trick worked and the invaders ignored the giant Buddha statue. But over time the true nature of the Buddha was forgotten. It remained covered in stucco, undervalued and largely ignored for almost 200 years.
All of that changed in 1955. The monks who cared for the Buddha statue had decided to move it from a simple tin roofed shed to a new temple. As the workers labored to move the immense Buddha, one of the ropes snapped and the statue fell hard. It hit the ground hard enough that some stucco chipped off, revealing the shining gold that lay hidden beneath the rough exterior. And thus began the labor intensive work of revealing the true nature of the Golden Buddha.
Most jobs in life can be accomplished in a variety of ways. However, it is always easier to complete a project successfully when you have the right tools.
When the monks discovered that the Golden Buddha was covered in stucco, they did not sit around and try to think the stucco away. And they didn’t try to wash it off with water, peel it off with their hands or remove it with a jack hammer. Rather, they found and used the right tools. At times they chipped away large pieces of stucco with chisels and mallets. At other times they used fine brushes and tiny picks. To complete their task, they found the right tools and used them systematically and consistently until the job was done.
Our individual quests to improve our lives and build stronger hope and faith are no different. Sometimes we will need to employ hammers and chisels as we make big and critical changes. At other times, we may need to focus on smaller but still critical changes with a fine pick. Wherever we are focusing our efforts, the right tools are critical, and the end goal is the same. We can find the right tools that will move us forward to our best selves.
In my book, The Promise of Hope, I write about some of the tools we can use in our lives to become our best selves. Like the Golden Buddha, we all have greatness inside of us we just need to uncover it. I hope my book can help you uncover the gold that is inside you.