Once upon a time, all the letters in Letter Land were caught up in a heated discussion. They were trying to decide who should be the leader in the play they would be staging at the Book Fare.

As the plan were, they had to stand next to each other in a row and spell the phrase “POSITIVE WORDS” as an intro to the rest of the play. They had to line up perfectly and stand in a straight line to make the phrase easily readable.

But they could not get themselves to agree on who should be their leader.

The letter L stood tall and shouted, “I am the longest of all letters. If you let me lead you, I will be able to see over everyone’s heads and make sure all of you are standing in the right positions.”

“No, you don’t understand,” said the letter T. “If you spot an error, you won’t be able to do anything about it. My hands are long enough, so if you are out of line, I can quickly tap you on the shoulder and tell you to move up.”

The letter I stood up, holding his chin up high as he spoke. “You’re all mistaken. I am the one who should do this. I will make it work because I am the most important. I am the only letter that can form a word by myself. I know ‘A’ can too, but that doesn’t count as an important word. If you choose me as your leader, I… listen up… I will make sure the play succeeds.”

The other letters murmured at the sound of I’s arrogance. But just as he sat down, W stood up and walked to the center of the room, with his wife E by his side.

“WE are the ones who will be able to make this a success,” he said. “If you elect the two of us as your leaders, WE will make sure that WE all look good on stage.”

So the letters decided to elect a leader. The letter I won by popular vote and took in the position as leader. He tried his best to get everyone to stand in a straight line, but his self-centeredness hampered their progress.

After a while, they all decided that W and his wife E should take over. They, too, tried their best to get things in order, but they failed miserably. They were too focused on perfecting their own positions that they failed to straighten up the others.

Finally, U stood up. “Guys, we can’t go on like this. I propose we scrap the idea of a leader. Instead, we must unite in unity to make this work. If every one of you just look to the right and to the left and see that the letter next to you is in line, we might be able to pull this off.”

The other letters agreed to try his proposal. It took a while for everybody to settle into their correct positions, but in the end they all lined up perfectly, spelling “POSITIVE WORDS” without a hitch.

If we try to do and manage things by ourselves, we will rarely be able to succeed. Instead, we must work together, and allow everyone to use their own unique strengths to get the job done.

Then the magic really starts to happen!