There was once a place called Grumble Town where everybody grumbled, grumbled, grumbled. In summer, the people grumbled that it was too hot. In winter, it was too cold. When it rained, the children whimpered because they couldn’t go outside. When the sun came out, they complained that they had nothing to do. Neighbors griped and groaned about neighbors, parents about children, brothers about sisters. Everybody had a problem, and everyone whined that someone should come do something about it.
One day a peddler trudged into town, carrying a big basket on his back. When he heard all the fussing and sighing and moaning, he put his basket down and cried, “O citizens of this town! Your fields are ripe with grain, your orchards are heavy with fruit. Your mountains are covered by good, thick forests, and your valleys watered by deep, wide rivers. Never have I seen a place blessed by such opportunity and abundance. Why are you so dissatisfied? Gather around me and I will show you the way to contentment.”
Now this peddler’s shirt was tattered and torn. His pants showed patches, his shoes had holes. The people laughed to think that someone like him could show them how to be content. But while they snickered, the peddler pulled a long rope from his basket and strung it between two poles in the town square. Then, holding his basket before him, he cried: “People of Grumble Town! Whoever is dissatisfied, write your trouble on a piece of paper, and bring it and put it in this basket. I will exchange your problem for happiness.”
The crowd swarmed around him. No one hesitated at the chance to get rid of his or her trouble. Every man, woman, and child in the village scribbled a grumble onto a scrap of paper and dropped it into the basket.
Then they watched as the peddler took each trouble and hung it on the line. By the time he was through, troubles fluttered on every inch of the rope, from end to end. Then he said: “Now each one of you should take from this magic line the smallest trouble you can find.”
The entire village rushed forward to examine all the hanging troubles. They hunted and fingered and pondered, each trying to pick the very smallest trouble. After several hours the magic line was empty.
And behold! Each held in his or her hand the very same trouble that they had put into the basket. Each had chosen their own trouble, thinking it was the smallest of all on the line.
From that day, the people of Grumble Town stopped grumbling all the time. And whenever anyone had the urge to whimper or whine, they thought of the peddler and his magic line.
“If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out… Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.” – Randy Pausch
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacqué