A Pig, a Unicorn, and a Gratitude Practice With a Twist

It was love at first sight.

We were in the aisle of our local Walmart hunting for cleaning products and toilet paper. It was the perfect picture of what a lot of 2020 consisted of - endless mundanity.

Then I saw it - a bright pink vision of fluffiness with a shiny horn and tufts of rainbow-colored hair. I immediately felt a swell of joy.

“Oh my God, it’s so cuuuttteeeee,” I gushed. Ten months into the pandemic, it felt like it had been a long time since I was excited about something and it had been at least fifteen years since I had noticed a stuffed toy. But this one was special. The perfect combination of whimsical, adorable, and magical.

My boyfriend also immediately fell in love with it and he claims that he had not been excited about a stuffed toy for at least thirty years. Up close, the object of our affection was even better than we thought. It was not just a cuddly face, it was a piggy bank as well. After fussing over it for five minutes, I caught myself.

“Alright, let’s get back to real life,” I admonished my adult self.

“We should buy it! Then you can cuddle it whenever you want! I haven’t seen that look of glee on your face for a while,” my boyfriend said.

“No, that’s silly. I’m too old for stuffed toys. Besides, we’ll probably forget about it in about 10 minutes,” I said.

Except we didn’t. We christened our new acquaintance Pigcorn. An adorable hybrid of a pig and a unicorn. Whenever we were having a bad day, we would joke about visiting Pigcorn. We would plan future adventures and talk about how much Pigcorn would enjoy it.

Fantasizing about Pigcorn as a real live pet took our minds out of the Groundhog day that we had been repeating all year. It ignited our imaginations again and made us laugh at the silliness of the scenarios we would create. We hadn’t realized how bland 2020 had been until this bright, ridiculous creature brought it to our attention. The pandemic had stripped us of our playfulness.

On an especially frustrating day, I moped in bed and these words blurted out of my mouth without me consciously thinking it, “I wish Pigcorn were here. Can we go visit him tomorrow?”

My boyfriend grinned excitedly, “Indubitably!”

The next day, we finally brought Pigcorn home. It was apt timing. It was New Year’s Eve and pretty much everyone in the world needed a fresh start in 2021. That night, as Pigcorn stared blankly at us, we reflected on 2020.

If we measured 2020 by its peaks, my year had been amazing - I had strenghtened a great relationship, established an amazing community of friends, launched a successful side hustle, made the most money I've ever made, and even completed my hardest rock climb ever. The problem was that it certainly didn’t feel that way. Most of my moments in 2020 were filled with mild to moderate anxiety, a complete inability to focus, and a lack of joy that I couldn’t quite shake. My boyfriend felt the same.

We had simply forgotten how to find joy in the day-to-day moments of our lives after a year of quarantine. The small moments. It’s hard when every day feels exactly the same as the one before and we had no idea when we could make plans again. We realized we had stopped scanning for silly things and enjoying the simple things in life. We both vowed not to have another year like that.

In 2021, we would start afresh and fill the small moments of our lives with playfulness, joy, and gratitude. We would do this at least once a day. We decided then and there that Pigcorn would be both the reminder and the witness of our bliss. Like an adorable time capsule, we would write post-it notes of our happy moments and keep it into Pigcorn - to be read at the end of the year.

After a month of having Pigcorn, I can safely say he is the most effective and fun reminder of a gratitude practice ever. The striking pink cuddlebug is hard to miss.

I hope you too will find your own version of Pigcorn. We all need a reminder that life isn’t just about what we achieve but how we feel while we are achieving it. Pigcorn is our visual cue to embrace the things that make us feel good - no matter how small and silly. In fact, especially when they are small and silly.

He helps us live our 2021 resolution of finding joy and playfulness every day. The best part is - we will get to relive our small moments of bliss all over again at the end of the year.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw.