The 99 Club

Long ago, there lived a King. This King should have been con­tent with his life, given all the riches and lux­u­ries he had. How­ever, this was not the case. The King always found him­self won­der­ing why he just never seemed con­tent with his life. Sure, he had the atten­tion of every­one wher­ever he went, attended fancy din­ners and par­ties, but some­how, he still felt some­thing was lack­ing and he couldn’t put his fin­ger on it.

One day, the King had waken up ear­lier than usual and decided to stroll around his palace. He entered his huge liv­ing room and came to a stop when he heard some­one hap­pily singing away… fol­low­ing this singing… he saw that one of the ser­vants was singing and had a very con­tent look on his face.

This fas­ci­nated the King and he sum­moned this man to his cham­bers. The man, his ser­vant, entered the King’s cham­bers as ordered. The King asked why he was so happy. To this the man replied: “Your Majesty, I am noth­ing but a ser­vant, but I make enough of a liv­ing to keep my wife and chil­dren happy. We don’t need too much, a roof over our head and warm food to fill our tummy. My wife and chil­dren are my inspi­ra­tion; they are con­tent with what­ever lit­tle I bring home. I am happy because my fam­ily is happy.”

Hear­ing this, the King dis­missed the ser­vant and sum­moned his Per­sonal Assis­tant to his cham­bers. The King related his per­sonal anguish about his feel­ings and then related the story of the ser­vant to his Per­sonal Assis­tant, hop­ing that some­how he will be able to come up with some rea­son­ing that here was a King who could have any­thing he wished for at a snap of his fin­gers and yet was not con­tented, whereas, his ser­vant, hav­ing so lit­tle was extremely contented.

The Per­sonal Assis­tant lis­tened atten­tively and came to a con­clu­sion. He said, “Your Majesty, I believe that the ser­vant has not been made part of The 99 Club”. “The 99 Club? And what exactly is that?” the King inquired. To which the Assis­tant replied, “Your Majesty, to truly know what The 99 Club is, you will have to do the fol­low­ing… place 99 Gold Coins in a bag and leave it at this servant’s doorstep, you will then under­stand what The 99 Club is.”

That very same evening, the King arranged for 99 gold coins to be placed in a bag at the servant’s doorstep. Although he was slightly hes­i­tant and he thought he should have put 100 Gold Coins in the bag, but since his assis­tant had advised him to put 99, which was what he did.

The ser­vant was just step­ping out of his house when he saw the bag at his doorstep. Won­der­ing about its con­tents, he took it into his house and opened the bag. When he opened the bag he let out a great big shout of joy… Gold Coins… so many of them. He could hardly believe it and he called his wife to show her the coins. He then took the bag to a table, emp­tied it out and began to count the coins. Doing so, he real­ized that there were 99 coins and he thought it was odd num­ber so he counted again, and again and again only to come to the same con­clu­sion.. . 99 Gold Coins. He began to won­der, what could have hap­pened to that last 1 coin? For no one would leave 99 coins. He began to search his entire house, looked around his back­yard for hours, not want­ing to lose out on that one coin. Finally, exhausted, he decided that he was going to have to work harder than ever to make up for that 1 Gold coin to make his entire col­lec­tion, an even 100 Gold Coins.

He got up the next morn­ing, in an extremely hor­ri­ble mood, shout­ing at the chil­dren and his wife for his bad mood, not real­iz­ing that he had spent most of the pre­vi­ous night con­jur­ing ways of work­ing hard so that he had enough money to buy him­self that gold coin. He went to work as usual, only, not in his usual best mood, singing hap­pily and whistling all day. He didn’t even seem to notice that the King was watch­ing him as he grumpily did his daily errands.

See­ing the man’s atti­tude change so dras­ti­cally, the King was puz­zled. He promptly sum­moned his assis­tant to his cham­bers. The King related his thoughts about the ser­vant and once again, his assis­tant lis­tened. The King could not believe that the ser­vant who until yes­ter­day had been singing away and was happy and con­tent with his life had taken a sud­den change of atti­tude, even though he should have been hap­pier after receiv­ing the gold coins. To this the assis­tant replied “Ah but your Majesty, the ser­vant has now offi­cially joined The 99 Club.”

He explained: “The 99 Club is just a name given to those peo­ple who have every­thing but are never con­tent, there­fore they are always work­ing hard and striv­ing for that extra 1 to round it out to 100. We have so much to be thank­ful for and we can live with very lit­tle in our lives, but the minute we are given some­thing big­ger and bet­ter, we want even more. We are not the same happy con­tented per­son we used to be, we want more, and by want­ing more, we don’t real­ize the price we have to pay for it. We lose our sleep, our hap­pi­ness; we hurt the peo­ple around us, just as the price to pay for our grow­ing needs and desires. That is what join­ing The 99 Club is all about.”

Hear­ing this, the King decided that from that day onwards, he was going to start appre­ci­at­ing all the lit­tle things in life. Striv­ing for more is always good, but let’s not strive so hard and for so much that we lose all those near and dear to our heart, we shouldn’t com­pro­mise our hap­pi­ness for moments of luxuries.