Poet, his hard time and his wisdom

There was once a poet who fell upon such hard times that he was no longer able to feed his family. Hearing that the king greatly encouraged talent and was famed for his generosity, the poet set off for the royal palace. When brought before the king, he bowed low and asked that he may recite a poem. On hearing his recitation, the king well pleased, asked him to name his reward.
The poet pointing to the finely wrought chessboard before the king said “your highness” if you place just one grain of rice on the first square of this chessboard and double it for every square, I will consider myself well rewarded.” “Are you sure?” asked the king, greatly surprised.
“So it shall be” ordered the king and his courtiers started placing the grain on the chessboard. One grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on. By the time they came to the tenth square they had to place 512 grains of rice. The number swelled to 5,24,288 grains on the 20th square. When they came to the halfway mark, the 32th square the grain count was 214,74,83,648- that is over 214 crores ! Soon the count increased to lakhs of crores and eventually the hapless king had to handover his entire kingdom to the clever poet. And it all began with just one grain of rice.
So what do we understand from this story: Never underestimate the power of compounding. If you stay invested long enough it will work for you. Sometimes though initially the journey seems tiring and impossible task to complete but continuous effort towards achieving it ensures our success. So the most important thing in our life is one step towards our objective.
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