Once upon a time a man lived with his two sons in a poor farming village that suffered frequent droughts and low crop yield. For many years they labored and toiled but the poverty and squalor persisted.

A wise old man appeared in a dream and gave the man an idea to create an irrigation system. He complied with the instructions from his dream and dug three wells in a plain and soon he was able to farm all year round. His farm grew and with each harvest he fed his family, sold crops and employed more to work on his farm. With his excess liquidity, he decided to get the best education money can buy for his sons. He sent them off to the best schools in the city and continued to grow his farming business.

His farm grew, even more; he used his influence to buy out more farmers and employed them on his farms. He never taught anyone how he was able to keep water flowing across the plain into his three wells. As his influence in the poor farming community grew so did his confidence and disdain for his people because he virtually had now employed every able-bodied man and woman. He paid them a pittance and kept them barely able to feed themselves let alone invest in education for their children.

After many years of studies, his children came back with fresh ideas to take the family business to new heights. They continued with their father’s penny-pinching ways and underpaid everyone in their employ. They started a food processing company but struggled to get the children of the peasants who worked for their father to work at the levels of efficiency that will make the business thrive.

They had by now made a significant investment in the business but with each passing month, they failed to reach optimum efficiency levels. Their father was now very frail and the future of the family business rested squarely on their shoulders.

Life was stressful because the uneducated peasants who worked for them were, to say the least, useless at turning around the investments they had made. The stress eventually got to the older brother who succumbed to a stroke and later died of a heart attack.

The surviving brother eventually folded the business due to the lack of decent manpower to take simple instructions that impacted on the efficiency of the business and for fear that he would end up like his brother. In no time all the wealth became useless.

The moral of this story is simple. If you cut corners to advance your personal interest at the expense of society, you pay back with interest. If you have the opportunity to impact society and you choose to favor your family and cronies only, all the great opportunities you equip them with will be meaningless because there will be nothing to multiply.

Wherever you find yourself today, remember that your actions will have rewards or consequences tomorrow. If you fail to pay it forward, you’ll pay with the future!

Go Forward, Make Rain

I’m Nhyira Addo - THE RAINMAKER

Shalom!!!