A Parable About Rejection

There once was a boy who lived in a village.
The boy's mother and father were tailors and owned a shop.
The shop was very successful and the boy's mother and father were very busy.
They wanted the boy to be a tailor also.
But the boy did not want to be a tailor.
Sewing and pleating and hemming and cutting.
It all bored him.
It was all he knew.
What the boy really wanted to do was be a smithy.
Work metal over a hot forge.
Heat and shape ore dug out of Mother Earth.
Each year the local blacksmith took on an apprentice.
This year the boy begged his parents to put his name in for consideration.
Loving him, they did so.
The time came for all the prospective apprentices to show their potential.
Each boy and girl that wanted to be a blacksmith took turns on the bellows.
Took turns with the tongs.
Took turns with the hammer and the anvil.
All the boys and girls went home and awaited the blacksmith's decision.
The boy was not chosen.

Time passed.
The boy worked in his parents shop mending and patching.
Patching and mending.
Unfulfilled and disconsolate.
One day his mother looked up from her work and spoke to her son.
"I always wanted to be a tailor.
As did your father.
To make fine serviceable clothing
that kept people warm and happy.
Doors were not always open to us.
We went through many struggles
to acquire this shop of ours.
For every disappointment
there is opportunity.
You are only defeated
when you stop seeking."
His mother returned to her work.
Inside the boy seeds of new dreams split
and began to grow.