The Young Puppet- Maker...

There was once a young man who liked puppets so much that he became an apprentice to a master puppet-maker. Sadly, the young man was very clumsy, and his teacher and the other apprentices were always telling him he had no ability when it came to making puppets, and that he would never amount to anything.

Even so, he enjoyed it so much that he worked day after day to improve. Despite his efforts, they would always find something wrong with the puppets he had made, and they ended up throwing him out of the workshop.

He wasn't going to give up, so the young man decided that from then on he would spend all his time making just one kind of puppet. On he went, and whenever he found a fault in his puppet he would abandon it and start again right from square one. The years passed, and with each new attempt his puppet became a little bit better. By now, his puppet was much better than anything his old fellow apprentices could make, but he kept making improvements, seeking perfection. Living like that, the man wasn't making any money, and many people laughed at how poor he was.

By the time he was an old man, his puppet was truly wonderful. So much so, that finally one day, after so many years of work, he finished work on his puppet, and said: "I can't find anything wrong with it. This time it is perfect", and for the first time in all those years, instead of abandoning his puppet, he put it up on the shelf, feeling truly satisfied and happy.

And the rest is history.

That perfect puppet came to life, had a thousand adventures, and gave that old man - whose name was Geppetto - more joy than any other famous puppet-maker ever got from any of their creations.

Trying hard to do things well is much more satisfying than doing them just to an ordinary standard.