He thought little about it until he dropped one of the balls on a rock and it cracked open.
Inside was a beautiful, precious stone.
Excitedly…. the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Wow…..each of them contained a similar treasure! He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left…….and then it struck him!
He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves.
Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands…..but he had just thrown it away.
It is like that with people. When we look at someone…. maybe even ourselves….all we see is the external 'clay' vessel. It may not look like much from the outside….it may not be beautiful or sparkling, so we decide to ignore it.