A Small Coin For A Lost City

Respect your commitments towards your potential of accomplishing what can be truly virtuous, reassessing the way in which you perceive your own being.

Do you remember the little boy, Nils Holgersson? Nils, the roguish, is transformed by a dwarf in a shrimp, in this way being bound to start a long journey across Sweden with a flock of wild geese.

In an unbelievably beautiful night, the stork Ermenrich and Nils have stopped on a deserted beach. While the stork was resting, Nils was walking on the abandoned beach. Suddenly, he stumbled against something hard. He leaned and saw in the sand a rusty small copper coin. Realizing that he had to deal with something valueless, he even has not thought to take it up and to put it in his pocket, but kicked it away.

Is the manifestation of your value, based on the criteria for assessing reality, limited by the testimony of a life experience that happens in a moment that gets lost?

When he wanted to go further, remained stunned when he saw that at a few steps away was raising a long entrenchment with battlements and towers. He slipped under the gate and stepped into the unknown city. He never saw something like this before. Only stores with precious things, very presentable people, tall houses full of grandeur, frontispieces adorned with more and more crafted ornaments etc. Anywhere he would take a glance he saw only work and enthusiasm. It was the heaven on earth.

Nils scoured the city a good piece of time, but no one paid attention at him, especially because he was small as a finger. At one moment, he thought in himself: "I will never be so rich to buy something of here." And, suddenly, to the calling of this desire, more and more merchants have gathered around him. All of them were making him understand that they were claiming as a payment for any product only one coin. But, Nils had no money. Then, all the merchants began to cry with tears.

Moved by their pathetic condition, and remembering the small copper coin from the seashore, Nils scuttled away. He got out of the city’s gate and headed directly toward the place where he discovered the coin. He found it immediately. However, when he had to go back to the town, he saw only the sea unceasingly billowing its waves.

Just as "knowing" is the act of the intelligent being, so too is "being sorry" the act of the being that has missed its purpose offered by fate in an equation of personal affirmation and capitalizing on the potential of exploring a new and unique life experience.

Do you have the power of accepting to be an artificial person in a confrontation with the image of a world that only appears in certain contexts?

Every human being has the obligation to protect his own moral and spiritual code that describes and facilitates his way of "functioning" which defines his whole being, his importance and his characteristic personality. However, in the same time, every human being has the obligation to penetrate the reality, expressing an attitude of acceptance of what it is true. The human orientation towards a certain area of reality, the same that deepens his perspective on the way he can exercise his value – it is the one that gives beauty and essence to his being.

When it comes to personal development or leadership, the emphasis is always put on your defining character trait. You can transform yourself into an "artificial" person, slowing down the process of evolution of your being by the lack of feelings and of the morality - or you can transform yourself into a person of high moral and spiritual qualities due to your desire of accomplishing what can be truly virtuous.

The real in this case is the compromise between your moral duty and will, between what should be done and what your conscience requires you to do. The personal development and self-knowledge begins with the honesty of your consciousness.

Do you have a certain responsibility towards the "nothing" in you, by confronting "at some point in your life you could have achieved something that really matters"?

A world that only reveals itself in certain contexts symbolizes your openness to novelty, to adventure, to always learning something of what you knew nothing about beforehand, as a sort of responsibility in the face of a change to which you can only contribute through a widening of consciousness over the entire experience of "I am".

Being an artificial man, as a sort of mismatch between yourself and the surrounding unknown from the great picture of the world, means to renounce self-image (the totality of beliefs and conditionings of remembrances) that highlights your "personal legend".

The city was called Vineta. It was destined to have lot of joys, but because of the pride and luxury of which got ill its inhabitants, the city was cursed - drowned by a flood and sank into the sea. Once in a century, the city was rising from the seabed in all its glory and remained on the surface for one hour. If in all this time, it was finding a living being to buy something, the spell that swept the city would have been shattered, and the people from it could have lived and died like all humans.

Nils carried his hands to the eyes and began to cry bitterly. If he had on him that coin, no matter how small, he could have saved the old city.

Are you finding yourself in the Nils’s hypostasis? Do you feel that your value has dropped to zero? Do you feel that in some point of your life, you could do something that really matters? Have you kicked your chance to be more than you are, to complete your fulfillment? What have you missed? What significance would have taken your life if you had acted under a just cause and of some noble feelings?

Can you harness your inner essence to become a transformative presence, so that you move from mere existence to the role of destiny maker?

You can be more than a simple man in a certain moment of life; you can be a real creator of destinies. If you have a "small coin". It represents a step towards your own spiritual and emotional development, being in a certain sense, which commonly is called "background" - which is adding essence to every human being.

This "small coin" may appear as a sublime thought, as a positive decision or a solution, of good words, a sparkle of inspiration, or may be the strong manifestation of some beautiful and noble feelings. You can weigh your value by the way you are using it.

Do you have a certain responsibility towards the "nothingness" of you? Do you accept to be a nobody and nothing, and to never claim anything else from you?

Leadership is the fruit of experiences at the limit that individualize your journey through an increase of the need of knowing yourself at peace with the status of a man who does not shy away from being harsh when it comes to failures.

A small coin for a lost city highlights what you may become by yourself if you give importance to those "little things" that contribute to maximizing your potential of becoming "somebody".

Just as a doctor must not return his look from anomalies, but have to seek and understand them - and so you should not lose your hope about those situations where you have not raised your potential to the highest standards, but to re-evaluate your way, in which you perceive your own being - showing your willingness to change, eliminating all the obstacles that stand in the way of your spiritual development and self-discovery.

Respect your duties towards your potential of accomplish what can be truly virtuous, reassessing the way in which you perceive your own being.

* Note: Selma Lagerlof - Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey through Sweden, Ioan Creanga Publishing, 1990.