What Makes 100%?

Josh laughed at the funny joke. Rosh loved it, that he’d got it straight away.

“Wanna play a game?” he asked.

Josh nodded, a happy smile suddenly breaking up on his face.

Rosh got together a calculator, a few scrap papers and a pencil.

He wrote up the letters of the English alphabet with numbers underneath the letters to show their place valuesin the alphabet.

A   B  C   D  E  F  G  H   I   J   K   L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S   T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

“If we equated our alphabets” he said, “to numbers in order of their positions, then:”

H + A + R + D + W + O + R + K
Gives us
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

K + N + O + W + L + E + D + G + E
Gives us
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

L + U + C + K
Gives us
12+21+3+11 = 47%

“None of them makes 100%. Then what makes 100%?”

“Is it Money?” asked Josh, now getting into the rhythm of the game.

“Check it out”, Rosh offered him the opportunity.

Josh spelled the word correctly, then painstakingly wrote up the equation and substituted the place values for the letters. Then his little fingers jabbed at the calculator keys:

M + O + N + E + Y
13+15+14+5+25 = 72%

They came short.

“No!” he yelled, then gave it another shot before his father could say anything, “Leadership?”

“Try it out”, Rosh offered him again.

Again Josh spelled the word correctly, then laboriously wrote up the equation and substituted the place values for the letters:

L + E + A + D + E + R + S + H + I + P
12+5+1+4+5+18+19+8+9+16 = 97%

They came short again.

“No!” he exclaimed, but had another candidate ready in a flash, “Love?”

“Go for it”, Rosh encouraged.

Again Josh spelled the word, wrote up the equation and substituted the place values for the letters:

L + O + V + E
12+15+22+5 = 54%

This missed the mark by a long shot. Josh tried a few more words, then quickly lost his patience.

“I give up”, he sighed, “What is it?”

“Every problem has a solution”, said Rosh, “all it takes to find it, is to change our own attitude.”

“ATITUDE" Josh shouted, excited again, and wanting to check out its worth.

Rosh helped him spell the word correctly. Josh wrote up the equation again and substituted the place values for the letters. Then he did the number crunching on the calculator:

A + T + T + I + T + U + D + E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

“Yay”, he punched the air triumphantly with his tiny fist, “It is attitude!”

“Yea”, Rosh pulled him closer suddenly, and hugged him tightly, “It is the most important. It is our attitude, not our aptitude, which determines our altitude.”

“Ability is what we are capable of. Motivation reveals what we will do. But attitude determines how well we do it.”

“It is our ATTITUDE towards Life, towards Work, towards Others, which makes our life 100% Successful.”