No competition.

While professional soccer is still struggling to find a firm foothold in the United States, in the 1970s the North American Soccer League marked the brave first attempt to introduce the game to American sports fans.

 While most teams had only limited success at best, one did manage to break through to genuine mainstream popularity - the New York Cosmos.
It was the brainchild of Steve Ross, a passionate soccer fan who was also a major executive at Warner Communications.

Max Ross told his son Steve: "In life there are those who work all day, those who dream all day, and those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfil those dreams. Go into the third category because there's virtually no competition".

Source: "Once In A Lifetime - The Extraordinary Story Of The New York Cosmos" by Gavin Newsham

Greed.

Once day, having learned that the King of Fez was hunting lions in the neighborhood, they decided to invite him and his court, and killed a number of sheep in his honors.

The sovereign had dinner and went to bed. Wishing to show their generosity, they placed a huge goatskin bottle before his door and agreed to fill it up with milk for the royal breakfast.

The villagers all had to milk their goats and then each of them had to tip his bucket into the container. Given its great size, each of them said to himself that he might just as well dilute his milk with a good quantity of water without anyone noticing.

To the extent that, in the morning, such a thin liquid was poured out for the king and his court that it had no taste than the taste of meanness and greed.

Source: "Leo The African" by Amin Maalouf

Plane crash survivor.

Juliane Koepcke was the daughter of two famous Zoologists who ran a research station in the

 Amazonian Jungles of Peru.

 She was on a flight with her mother going from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru in the Amazon jungle.

The flight would take less than an hour. They were flying to spend Christmas with Juliane’s father.

The flight went fine until halfway through it. A lightning bolt hit a fuel tank and ripped the right wing off.

Presents were flying around the cabin and then Juliane was sucked out of the airplane as it spiraled to the ground.

She was still attached to a row of chairs. She fell two miles before she landed in the jungle among thick foliage. She knew about the Amazon and how to survive, because her father had taught her. She had a broken collarbone and one eye was swollen shut.

She had major lacerations on her arms and legs. She found a creek and began walking through it to find a stream that would lead her to a river and civilization. She survived crocodiles, piranhas, and devils rays.

She walked for 10 days before she found a boat and a hut. She was starving and had maggots infesting her wounds. She stayed in the hut for the night and the next day Peruvian lumberjacks found her and brought her to a nearby town.

2 frog.

This is the story of two frogs. One frog was fat and the other skinny. One day, while searching for food, they inadvertently jumped into a vat of milk. 

They couldn't get out, as the sides were too slippery, so they were just swimming around.

The fat frog said to the skinny frog, "Brother frog, there's no use paddling any longer. We're just 
going to drown, so we might as well give up." 

The skinny frog replied, "Hold on brother, keep paddling. Somebody will get us out." And they continued paddling for hours.

After a while, the fat frog said, "Brother frog, there's no use. I'm becoming very tired now. I'm just going to stop paddling and drown. It's Sunday and nobody's working. We're doomed. There's no possible way out of here." But the skinny frog said, "Keep trying. Keep paddling. Something will happen, keep paddling." Another couple of hours passed.

The fat frog said, "I can't go on any longer. There's no sense in doing it because we're going to drown anyway. What's the use?" And the fat frog stopped. He gave up. And he drowned in the milk. But the skinny frog kept on paddling.

Ten minutes later, the skinny frog felt something solid beneath his feet. He had churned the milk into butter and he hopped out of the vat. 

Author-Melissa D Zartman 

“If you are going through hell, keep going “- Winston Churchill.

Relationship.

It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. 

The hedgehogs, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm.

This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. 

After a while, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. 
So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. 

Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. 

They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others.

This way they were able to survive. 

The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual 
learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities.

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”  -J.K.Rowling.