A
lady in a faded grey dress and her husband, dressed in a home-spun suit
walked in timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University
President's outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that
such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard and probably
didn't even deserve to be in Harvard.
"We want to see the President "the man said softly.
"He'll be busy all day "the secretary snapped.
"We'll wait" the lady replied.
For
hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally
become discouraged and go away. They didn't and the secretary grew
frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president.
"Maybe
if you see them for a few minutes, they'll leave" she said to him. The
President, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him "
We
had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was
happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My
husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on
campus."
The
president wasn't touched....He was shocked. "Madam "he said, gruffly, "
we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and
died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery."
"Oh, no," the lady explained quickly,
We don't want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to
Harvard."
The
president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun
suit, and then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how
much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in
the physical buildings here at Harvard."
For
a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could
get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly,
"Is that all it costs to start a university ? Why don't we just start
our own?"
Her
husband nodded. The president's face wilted in confusion and
bewilderment. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away,
traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the
University that bears their name: -
StanfordUniversity, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.
Most of the time we judge people by their outer appearance,
which can be misleading. And in this impression, we tend to treat
people badly by thinking they can do nothing for us. Thus we tend to
lose our potential good friends, employees or customers.
Remember
In our Life, we seldom get people with whom we want to share & grow our thought
process, But because of our inner EGO we miss them forever.
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