It is in hoping that we dream, in dreaming that we seek, and in seeking that we find our heart's desires.....

Hidden Camera

It was the strangest job application that she had ever filled out. Her hands trembled slightly. She wanted this position above all else. It was what she had worked so hard for - it would offer her everything she had struggled to achieve - a 'title', interesting work days, and of course, a salary she had only been able to dream of until now.

Beneath her name, address and other particulars was a single question in bold black lettering at the center of the page. It asked: “What have you once been led to believe which you later found to be not true?”

A tingle of paranoia tiptoed up her spine and she glanced around, wondering if she might be on one of those hidden camera shows. This was not typical of the type of question that would be asked for this level position, nor was filling out an application form standard procedure during an interview of this calibre. This was plain weird.

No cameras were visible to her eye in the richly decorated boardroom, so she shrugged off her feelings of wariness, and reread the question. With pen in hand, she thought for a bit and considered how she would approach this odd question.

As a child her overactive imagination made her gullible to a fault. Any story was believable. Elves and fairies and mystical characters were all real, there was a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, nursery rhymes spoke the truth, there was a  man in the moon, and you could dig a hole in  your back yard deep enough that it would end up in China.

Her teen years came and went, then young adulthood arrived and truths were often revealed when least expected. Lifelong beliefs, ingrained over time, still steeping in youthful naivete, were shattered like delicate crystal.

Once upon a time she had blindly believed that all friends were loyal; that the people we trust most will never hurt us, that nothing but good can result from telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that authority figures could be depended upon to look out for our best interests, and that people say what they mean and mean what they say.

By the time she had stockpiled all my knowledge learned from life’s trials and tribulations - the give and take of marriage and friendship, the give of raising children, the take of working for a living - the few optimistic beliefs she still clung to were running solely on fumes.

The muted sound of a phone ringing somewhere nearby broke her thoughts. She looked down again at the question that continued to taunt her in all its black boldness from the center of the white page. She quickly made a decision, picked up her pen and began her answer.

“For most  of my adult life I believed that there was only one way to reach success in any part of one’s life, and that was to focus on the top rung of the ladder and blind myself too anything or anyone that got in the way. I believed that those choosing to be content with any of the lower rungs were failures. For far too long that is what I believed to be the truth.”

With a cleansing sigh, and a new realization of her own self-worth, she dropped her pen into her purse, picked up her coat, and stepped quietly from the elegant boardroom, leaving the interview form on the boardroom table, and headed home to change into her old, comfortable jeans, make herself a cup of tea, and wait for the look of surprise on her children's faces when they arrived home to find her already there.

In answering the interview question, the hidden camera in her mind showed her that people who believe in success at any cost usually end up paying a very high price and that she would gain far more along the paths of my life journey if she took the time to find the centre of her own star, knowing that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige but on relationships with the people she loved and respected and, most importantly, that home and family was, for her, where she could achieve a personal success far more fulfilling than that offered in the corporate culture.