There is a parable about a large family living in a one room hut in a small village. The only thing they have to their name of any value is a goat, and they sell its milk at the market.
However, this goat is loud and smelly and disturbs them when they try to sleep. They go to the town elder and ask him for guidance, “What should we do about the goat?” He says, “Bring the goat inside.”
Now, the goat is even smellier and louder and is stepping on people when they try to sleep. This is worse. They cannot tolerate it.
They go to the town elder and say, “This is not helping, what should we do?” He says, “Put the goat outside.” They bump into the town elder a few weeks later and tell him, “Thank you so much, you were very helpful.”
The moral of the story is that sometimes what you think is bad, while it is bad, it is a better problem than another problem.
Sometimes we need to value that we have good problems.
We need to value our hardships.
We need to be grateful for the problems that we are given; and be glad that we do not have OTHER problems, other types of hardships, which may be even harder to tolerate.
This is a little different than the “starving kids in Africa” speech many of us received as children. It is one thing to hear a hypothetical “it could be worse” situation. It is quite another to experience it in some way firsthand, and then when you go back to your original baseline, you have a newfound appreciation. You can be grateful that what you were complaining about yesterday…is better than the problem you’re facing today.
So, if there are times in your life you’re having trouble finding gratitude, imagine what it would be like if the goat was inside the house.
Even better, remember the times in your life when it felt like the goat WAS inside the house.
And, whatever you are facing today, on balance, is a better problem to have.
Actor and comedian Stephen Colbert lost his father and two siblings in a plane crash when he was young. When interviewed about it, he said
“What punishments of God are not gifts? … It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that…You have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for. So, what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being, if it’s true that all humans suffer.”
He goes on to further elaborate that “I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”
So even if today’s problem is that the goat is inside the house, maybe there is a point of growth in that. Maybe, even if we wish we weren’t facing this struggle or trial, we can learn from it, find meaning in it, be grateful for what comes of it.
Perspective. Love. Connection. Faith. Valuing the moments. Tuning in.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
Marianne Williamson
