I want to tell you a quick story about when Uncle Jake was a kid and when Uncle Jake learned some things that were very important to him and that really helped him begin to lead a better life so there’s a lesson to this story it’s like a fable and so pay attention and see if you can learn what the lesson is so here’s a story from Uncle Jake when I was a little kid I was running in a race it was a pretty long race for kids my dad had taken me to another town to run the race because I liked running the race was about four miles long adults and kids were both running at the same time so it was kind of crowded and it was hard to even see with all the people around it was the biggest race I had ever been in as soon as it started I ran really hard as hard as I could and it seemed like I was winning the race at least it seemed like I was winning for all the kids that were in the race but I didn’t look back I kept looking ahead and focused on winning and they look back at all because I knew that looking back slows you down I just ran and ran and ran and I was really really tired but I kept running as hard as I could even when I felt tired I kept pushing and finally I got towards the end of the race and I started to recognize where the finish line was going to be and I turned the last corner and saw the finish line and I headed for it and once I had turned the corner then I started getting closer to the finish line the crowd started to cheer they started that cheer loud they must be cheering from me I thought I must be winning I am going to win this race I will be the champion I thought to myself as I picked up my pace the closer I got to the finish line the louder everyone got they were screaming and cheering and I was running so hard I was looking straight ahead just bounding towards the finish line then they were screaming and it was like I was famous and finally I sprinted across that finish line and I was so proud of what I had done and I slowed down and then I came to a stop and then I looked up to see all of my adoring fans but they weren’t looking at me they were looking at someone else and they kept cheering and now they were cheering even louder and I could suddenly tell that they hadn’t been cheering for me at all and I looked behind me to see what they were cheering at and then I saw what they were cheering at I saw a father who was pushing his daughter in a wheelchair and she must have had a very bad disease because she couldn’t really even hold her head up but as our dad pushed her and the crowd cheered loud she did her best to wave to the crowd and she smiled and waved and her dad pushed her across the finish line he looked very tired and she looked very happy and I I felt embarrassed I felt embarrassed because I’d been so proud of myself thinking I had done such a great thing not knowing that there was someone right behind me that was doing something even better something even harder something that took more courage than what I had done and I went over to the girl and her father and I smiled and I said nice job on the race and her mouth moved and it looked like she was trying to say thank you because I don’t think she could talk but the dad said thank you young man you ran a good race to thank sir I said then he pushed her away to get some water and I realized two very important lessons the first one is that even when I’m doing something very challenging there’s always someone that is doing something even more challenging and more important than that I realized that the world doesn’t revolve around me I thought everyone was cheering from me and that made me feel good I thought I was the center of the world but that is seldom the case there’s a big world out there and I’m only part of it and I needed to stay humble and think about other people and not only of myself
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