Inside the Barrel of Gratitude

My backyard is full of old junk that I have not used for many years. There are old barrels, bits of broken fences, sheds, and many other unused items. I decided that this was the morning that I would have a clearout, so I drank my morning coffee and went into the yard to see what was there.

I decided to play around with some of the old barrels. As a child, we used to kick the old barrels around in the dusty yards that belonged to our parent's houses. We would use them as footballs once our parents had emptied them, and I wanted to recapture those glory days.

I knocked one of the barrels to the ground; I wasn't expecting the lid to fall off, as I thought that it would have been sealed by all the old dirty bronze rust that had accumulated around the lid after all these years. As the barrel crashed to the ground, followed by the sound of a thousand tins being crushed and echoing all around me, the lid fell off. Curious to see what was inside, I decided to have a peek.

There couldn't possibly be much in there, after all these years!

The barrel was empty, or so I thought; the only thing that was showing was the water that had gathered at the bottom of it over the years.

I turned on my torch in order to get a proper look, but I saw nothing so I turned it off again.

I was about to close the lid, but just as I was about to move; a gold glowing light filled the barrel like a vortex. The vortex swirled around the barrel for a while, then it shaped into a circle of letters that read;

'BE GRATEFUL EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE.'

I thought that this was just going to be a typical, old, rusty barrel that might be full of junk that I had piled into it over the years; I was a bit of a hoarder when it came to junk anyway!

However, this barrel was far from a piece of junk. it was valuable and magical.

It held something that money can't buy;

gratitude

I decided to keep the old barrel. To everyone else, it was just a useless piece of junk that sat in my backyard doing nothing, but to me this barrel was magical, and it held value.

Every day I wake up, I go to my window and open up the curtains. I take in the view and I listen to the birds chirping outside, then I go downstairs and make myself a cup of tea while admiring the beauty of everything that surrounds us every day: the trees, birds, sunshine, rain, flowers, even just watching the traffic and people going by and getting on with their busy every day lives. When I have finished, I go outside and peek into the barrel which holds a new quote for me every single day.

If there is one thing that my magic barrel has taught me, it is that

'We can find gratitude in our lives every day, and that gratitude holds more value than money can buy.'

The thing about life is;

'life is more precious and bigger than any money or materialistic things that it can buy.'

A happy and healthy life isn't about what you buy, nor is it about what you have;

It is about living every single day and enjoying every single moment of happiness that we find in everyday life.

It is about gratitude. Being grateful for what you have, rather than for what you don't have.