"Riches which we never dreamed of are so near, yet so far"

AS BALBOA STOOD on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which he had just discovered, overlooking that vast expanse of water, he had no idea of its size, its gigantic proportions.

He did not know that he had discovered the largest ocean in the world. There was no way for Balboa to recognize that the waters of the Pacific stretched from the American continents to the continents of Asia and Australia. He did not conceive that the Pacific Ocean contained about seventy million square miles of water.

When Christopher Columbus and his sailors first sighted land in the New World, dropped anchor and came ashore at San Salvador (Watling Island in the Bahamas), they had no idea how close they were to the virgin riches of the great American mainland.

Although on this third voyage to the New World in I498, Columbus is believed to have set foot upon the South American shores of Venezuela, the great "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" had only scratched the surface of the New World which he had discovered.

We are a lot like Balboa and Columbus—we have barely scratched the surface of the potential for good, the potential of the slumbering genius that lies dormant within each of us.

Riches which we never dreamed of are so near, yet so far. There are treasures within our grasp but unless we become the "Columbus of our soul," the discoverer, they are of no practical value to us.

I once heard the story about a tramp whose death was attributed to malnutrition. He died for lack of sufficient food, yet in his coat were found, neatly sewn between the lining, thousands of dollars in large denomination bills. A previous owner of the coat had hid his money in this fashion. The tramp, who eventually the knot have some unsuspecting donor, had riches within his grasp, but he did not know this.

Would you believe it if I were to tell you that nineteen out of every twenty persons parallel the story of the tramp who died of malnutrition? Keep the tramp story in your memory as you read this chapter and you will discover that what I have said is true.

As our early settlers pushed westward across the great plains of America, they frequently paused but then moved on westward. During these brief stops, they would dig in search of water to meet their human needs, as well as those of their livestock. They would dig shallow wells, but, not finding the water they needed near the surface, they would leave these lands and move on.

Many years later, as farm and grazing lands grew scarce in America, farmers drove deeper and deeper into the earth and reached abundant sources of water. They dug down deep. They discovered what the early settlers passed over.

Every great philosopher and sage since the dawn of civilization has admonished us to "Know Thyself." Do we truly know much of anything about ourselves? For the great majority of us, the surprising answer is a great big "No." Our knowledge is vastly greater of the material things about us.

Scientists and psychologists tell us that the so-called average person uses only-a tenth of his mental potential. Statistics show that only about five out of a hundred, in all walks of life, become what are recognized as "successes in life." Nineteen out of every twenty fail to reach their mark in life. Why do so many fall short, miss their mark and wind up on the desolate beaches of life? The record could scarcely be worse if we intentionally set about to fail.