Just One Story for Choice Making

The Grain of Rice
Grain of Rice

Copyright/Czarnota 2008

No portion of this story may be recorded or copied without permission from the author. This story is in the public domain but this version is protected.

There was a king who had four daughters, each of whom he knew and loved equally. In his aging years he knew one must take the throne as his replacement, but didn’t know which one to choose. So, he devised a test. The king gave each daughter a single grain of rice.

“Each of you must decide what to do with your rice. I’m going away and when I return I will choose who will be queen.”

The first daughter looked at the rice in her hand and said, “My father is a great king and so this rice is most precious.” She wrapped it in golden thread and placing it on an altar prayed over it each day for her father’s safe return.

The second daughter thought this is special rice from my most special father. She hid hers in a plain box under the bed so that robbers would not steal it.

The third daughter said “My father is a great king and I can have rice anytime I want.” She threw hers in the trash bin.

The fourth held her rice for a year and a day and contemplated what to do with it.

Time passed, perhaps two years and more. The daughters were looking out the window one day and saw a man traveling toward the palace; it was their venerable father. They took him in, washed his feet, dressed him in clean robes, and fed him before he asked; “Now daughters, I am most curious to know what you did with your rice.”

The first brought the gold wrapped grain to him. “I treated it with great respect and prayed for your safe return.”

The king kissed his first daughter’s cheek. “I am proud of you my daughter.”

The second brought a dusty box from under her bed. “I kept it safe from robbers, Father.”

“I am proud of you,” he said kissing his second daughter’s cheek.

The third daughter had a problem didn’t she? She had thrown hers away, but let’s face it, one grain of rice looks like any other. She went to the kitchen and got another grain. “Look father, here is mine.”

The king did not become king for lack of wisdom and he knew his daughters well. “I expected as much,” he said with a knowing smile. She was a clever one to be sure. “And I am proud of you.”

His fourth daughter stood silent by the window as each of her sisters presented their rice.

“And my fourth one, where is your rice?”

“My father,” she said sadly. “I no longer have my rice.”

The old king walked to her side and looked out the window.

“I planted it Father for the people were hungry.”

Before the old king’s eyes were fields of rice from the single grain he had given his daughter.

“I am most proud of you,” he said placing a crown upon her head. “For a good queen knows that she must care for others.”

Now it is not so much that the fourth became queen that makes this story important when we think about choices. Each daughter did what she felt was the right thing, each was presented with the same opportunity, and each was successful in some way. No choice made by the princesses was wrong, because success has many definitions. But only one daughter succeeded at the proposed goal of becoming queen.
May you do with your grain of rice that which will bring you success.