Idries Shah tells a story of Nasrudin, a leg-endary comic figure of the Sufi tradition. One night, in a dream, Nasrudin saw a hand magically counting out gold coins to him. The hand counted out: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and then abruptly stopped. Nasrudin became anxious and began to remonstrate with the hand— "ten, where's the tenth, I must have ten—" He became so agitated that he woke up and the hand and all the coins disappeared. Closing his eyes, Nasrudin lay back in his bed and, with resignation, he sighed, "OK, I'll take the nine." Sometimes in our life, when we have pushed things as far as we can go, we can settle for what has been given and be happy and thankful for all that we have.