Skip to content

Buried Treasure

reading book on the beachLegendary personal development author and speaker, Bob Proctor, told a teaching story months before he died at age 87.  It’s worth sharing.

Bob delivered the Toronto Star newspaper as a young boy. His brother helped him in this business delivering to over 300 customers on his route.  An old, large house was on his route, occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Chapman. Mr. Chapman was an old, frail looking, bent over junk man.  He pushed his junk cart around town gathering discarded junk for resale. His wife, tall, thin and dressed like the wife of a poor junkman, could be seen scurrying through town to her next job as a cleaning lady for homes and businesses.  Neither one presented a pretty picture.

One day, Bob, was shocked to see the front page of the Toronto Star he was about to deliver announcing Mr. Chapman’s death.  It seems this “junk man” left behind over $100,000 in cash inside his home.  Since this was the 1940’s, the cash would easily be worth over a million dollars today.

Bob’s point to the story was “money is not meant to be hoarded. It works best when it flows like a river.”  It’s easy to see the truth in Bob’s statement since the Chapman’s could have had a better life if they had spent some of the money.

The take away for me to this true story is to be aware of what is inside you.  Just as seemingly buried treasure was in Mr. Chapman’s house, it’s human nature to hide away our talents and gifts.  The greatest of these gifts is our body’s incredible capacity to be healthy if we would just get out of the way.   Ease is and always will be the opposite of dis-ease.  Relax occasionally and have faith in your talents.