A father said to his daughter, “You graduated from college with honors, so here is a car that I acquired several years ago. But before I give it to you, take it to the used car lot downtown and tell them I want to sell it. See how much money they will offer you. They daughter went to the used car lot, returned to her father, and said, “They offered me only $1,000 because they said it looks very worn out.” Then the father said, “Okay, then take it to the pawn shop and see how much they will offer you.” The daughter returned from the pawn shop and said, “They only offered $500 because it is so old and they don’t really sell cars.” The father then asked his daughter to go to the local car club and ask what it’s worth. The daughter returned from the club and told her father, “The people at the car club said it’s worth at least $100,000. It’s a Skyline R34, a rare iconic car.”

“The right place values you in the right way. If you are not valued as you should be, don’t be upset or angry–it simply means that you are in the wrong place. Put yourself in situations where you are valued and people know your worth. Don’t stay in any situations where no one sees your value. That applies to all facets of life, especially work and relationships.

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5FwsblpT8″][vc_column_text]Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]