The Contest

Not long ago a small town in Oregon hosted a sand castle building contest. The town council members voluteered to be the judges of the contest. The prize was to be five gallons of icecream.

On the day of the contest a group of young boys arrived at the beach.

One of the boys took aside another boy and told him, "There's no rule against joining together to build a castle. We can do more together than we can apart. Let's really do something to win a name for ourselves and then split the prize."

The same boy went to another boy and asked him to join his team. One by one he invited everyone to join his team.

When he came to the last boy and extended his offer, the last boy said, "Well, I've really got a castle I want to build. Why don't you build a castle of your own?" And he could not be persuaded otherwise.

"Everyone is on my team except for this boy." He thought. "Clearly I will be on the winning team and get at least some of the icecream."

So the contest began. One boy began building his castle, and nine boys began building a giant castle.

The leader of the nine boys called out and said, "We can't just all start doing our own thing here. If the style is different in different places, it won't work right." So he assigned each boy to work on a different section of the castle.

"You've got to make square spires and rounded walls. The whole thing must be five inches off the ground. The moat will be two inches deep and the entrace will be in the center."

And so the nine boys began.

One of the judges saw what the nine boys were doing, so he said another judge: "Look at what they're doing! They're ganging up. It's not fair for them to combine their work while that other poor boy works by himself."

Another judge, who was perhaps wiser, said, "Don't be quick to disrupt the contest. Watch and see what happens."

While the one boy continued to work on the castle, he said to himself, "Certainly I don't have the talent to defeat nine opponents working together. On the other hand this castle is looking good to me, and -who knows?- perhaps I could win anyway."

Some of the adults watched and said, "This is really going to teach the boys a good lesson about teamwork ... especially for that selfish boy who wants all the icecream for himself."

As the nine boys worked one of them said to another, "This castle shouldn't have a moat. It's too common and medieval." And in his frustration he would occasionally knock over his work.

Another boy said out loud, "We're not making it tall enough. We should make it into a fortress. We should put our effort into making it the largest castle ever!". And he thought to himself, "No one cares about my opinion." In his frustration he made his section of the castle a little bigger -knowing it would hurt the castle's ratings.

The contest came to a close.

The one boy who had worked alone looked at his modest castle and said to himself, "I like this castle." The judge who recommended breaking the boys up heard him say this and found it hard to disagree with him.

The same judge looked over at the castle of the boys who had joined together. Those boys were openly disagreeing with each other. The castle looked different in several places, and was unfinished in several parts.

Some of the boys were working to restrain a boy who had become so angry he had attacked the work of the castle.

The judges met together and agreed the icecream should go to the boy who had worked by himself.

One of the boys cried out and said, "It's totally unfair for that one boy to get the icecream that could have gone to everyone!".

A judge responded, "Your castle is a mess and a disaster to the eyes! Give all the icecream to the boy who worked alone."

The boy who worked alone said, "I wanted the icecream, but I learned while I was working that I wanted to build that castle as well. So why not share the icecream together?"

As the boy was speaking his parents arrived and insisted that they had to clean up at home before an important baseball game, and that they had no time to divide up the icecream.

The team of the nine boys watched with large eyes as the father of the boy took the entire 5 gallon container of icecream and put it into their car. The boy waved at the nine boys as they drove away.

The boys cried and some of the boys screamed. "I didn't get to build the castle the way I wanted ... and I didn't get any icecream!" No one on the beach could console them.

And that is how it will be for everyone who lives by the values of others.