This a story about a forester named Sam. Old Sam would be out chopping down the tree. You could hear him say one phrase: "Oh, Adam. Oh, Adam." Every time he hit that tree, he'd say, "Oh, Adam."

One day the foreman came by and asked him, "How come every time you hit the tree, you say, 'Oh, Adam?'" Sam said, "Because Adam, my forefather, sinned against God. God cursed him and said that he would have to work from that time on. So every time I hit this ax against the tree, it reminds me that if Adam hadn't sinned, I wouldn't have to work."

One day his supervisor came and said, "Come here, Sam." He took him to his big, plush, palatial ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. He said, "It's all yours. You can live in it; you can do whatever you want. You've got a swimming pool, a tennis court, and servants everything. Everything in this house is yours. I'm giving it to you because I don't want you to struggle with that Adam mentality. I ask only one thing: Don't lift up the box on the dining room table. Enjoy everything else in the house, be what you want to be, do your own thing, but that box on the dining room table, do not touch."

Sam said, "No problem. I can handle it." So Sam played tennis every day, went swimming, ate three meals a day. But after about five months, he saw that box. That bothered him. He wanted to know why, if he could have everything, that box was so important. He said, "No, I'm not going to touch it; I'm not going to jeopardize my time here."

After a year he had tried everything. He had gotten used to everything.

There was nothing new anymore. There was only one thing new in that house, and that was that box. And so one day, when nobody was looking, he lifted up the box just a little bit. Out of that box ran a little, teeny mouse that hid, and Sam couldn't catch it and couldn't find it. The supervisor came and noted that the box had been lifted. He went to Sam and said, "Now Sam, I warned you. Go back out into the forest and pick up your ax and chop again." The next time the supervisor came by he heard Sam saying, "Oh, Sam. Oh, Sam."