Once upon a time, on a planet so very near, there once was an orphaned boy who needed a way to make money to feed himself and his little sister. Because his clothes were in tatters and he was very small in stature, no one would give him work. Every day, he would roam the main streets, asking people for work and each day, he would be turned away and somethings had to run away to avoid being hit by flying objects thrown at him by annoyed prospects. Yet, he returned, the next day and the next because he considered each rejection as steps to the eventual day that someone would give him a job so he can earn money.
One day, a merchant who had been observing the boy’s daily troll of the market center, finally offered him a job. He asked the boy to cut down a mighty oak in 2 days. Excited to have work at last, the orphaned boy took the saw he was given by the merchant and began to hack at the oak tree. For hours he persisted and there was no dent in the tree.
The merchant came by in the evening and asked the boy to stop. Unrelenting, the orphaned boy continued to saw into the tree and worked all night. When the merchant returned the next morning, the mighty oak tree was nearly sawed in half! With more effort from the orphaned boy and some additional hands with ropes around the oak tree, the mighty oak came down and shook the ground as it fell. He did it!
Very impressed with his persistence and tenacity, the merchant not only paid the boy the wages due for felling the tree, he adopted him and his little sister and raised them as his own children. The boy grew up to inherit the merchant’s business and expand it into multiple businesses which made him and his adopted relatives very wealthy.
Years later, the boy told his story to another young boy who grumbled about the amount of work he would need to do to get his results. The wealthy orphan kindly told the young boy, “Consider each day’s effort as but one blow of your blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may make zero impact on the wood; as a matter of fact, one hundred blows may make no impact on the oak tree. However, if you keep the effort consistent, the cumulative blows will fell the oak tree and you will have your desired result.”