‘There is one thing in the world which you must never forget. If you were to forget everything else and remembered this, then you would have nothing at all to worry about; but if you were to remember everything else and then forget this, you would have done nothing with your life.

It is as if a king sent you to a country to carry out a particular mission. You go to that country, you do a hundred different things; but if you do not perform the mission assigned to you, it is as if you have done nothing. All human beings come into the world for a particular mission, and that mission is our singular purpose. If we do not enact it, we have done nothing…

Now, if you were to say, “Look, even if I have not performed this mission I have, after all, performed a hundred others,” that would mean nothing. You were not created for those other missions. It is as if you were to buy a sword of priceless Indian steel such as one usually finds only in the treasuries of emperors, and were to turn it into a butcher’s knife for cutting up rotten meat, saying, “Look, I’m not letting this sword stay unused, I am putting it to a thousand highly useful purposes.” Or it is as though you were to take a golden bowl and cook turnips in it, while for just one grain of that gold you could purchase hundreds of pots.

Or it is as though you were to take a dagger of the most finely-wrought and tempered steel and use it as a nail to hang a broken pitcher on, saying, “I am making excellent use of my dagger. I am hanging my broken pitcher on it, after all.” When you can hang a pitcher on a nail that costs only a few cents, what sense does it make to use a dagger worth a fortune?

Remember the root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes his precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his broken pitcher.

You are more valuable than both heaven and earth.

What else can I say? You don’t know your own worth.

Do not sell yourself at a ridiculous price,

You who are so valuable in God’s eyes.’ Rumi