A Life Lesson

As we were walking around the Thunder in the Mountains Pow Wow in Parsons West Virginia this man stopped us and began speaking to the kids. He offered a challenge with the promise of a gift as a reward should Randy manage to complete the challenge. After agreeing to the challenge the man brought forth a small stick with a string and ring tied onto the end and laid out that his challenge was to try to catch the ring with the end of the stick.

He said "it's not hard" and proceeded to demonstrate how to do it before giving Randy the stick and telling him he had three tries to complete the challenge. Randy tried his hardest for all three attempts but just couldn't get the ring on the end of the stick and he was a little sad at not being able to complete the challenge and claim the reward for himself and his brothers. When giving the stick back to the man stopped him and said "In life, we always try to teach a lesson, what was my challenge?" Randy quoted back to him that the challenge was to get the ring on the end of the stick but the man stopped him short and said "the challenge I gave you was to TRY to get the ring on the end of the stick, did you try?". He went on and explained that as long as you don't try you can never achieve anything and by trying your best you've oftentimes already completed the challenge.