A few weeks ago I made myself some coffee, picked up the morning paper and sat down to listen to the radio. I turned the tuning knob until suddenly the velvety voice of an old man caught my attention. He said something about "a thousand balls." I became interested, turned up the volume and leaned back in my chair.
“Okay,” said the old man, “I bet you are very busy at work.” Yesterday, today, tomorrow. And may they pay you a lot. But with this money they buy your life. Think about it, you are not spending this time with your loved ones. I will never believe that you need to work all this time to make ends meet. You work to satisfy your desires. But know that this is a vicious circle - the more money, the more you want and the more you work to get even more. You need to be able to ask yourself at one point: “Do I really need another blouse or car? And for this you are ready to miss your daughter’s first dance performance or your son’s sports competition. Let me tell you something that really helped me preserve and remember what is important in my life.” And he began to explain his “thousand balls” theory.
- Look, one day I sat down and counted. The average person lives 75 years. I know some live less, others more... But they live about 75 years. Now I multiply 75 by 52 (the number of Sundays in a year) and it turns out 3900 - how many Sundays you have in your life. I was fifty-five when I thought about this. This meant that I had already lived about 2900 Sundays. And I only had 1000 left. So I went to the toy store and bought 1000 small plastic balls. I put them all in one transparent jar. After that, every Sunday I pulled out and threw away one ball...
And I noticed that when I did this and saw that the number of balls was decreasing, I began to pay more attention to the true values of this life. There is no stronger remedy than watching how the number of days allotted to you decreases! Now listen to the last thought I would like to share with you today before I hug my beloved wife and go for a walk with her. This morning I pulled the last ball out of my jar... So every day after that is a gift to me. I accept it with gratitude and give warmth and joy to my loved ones. You know, I believe that this is the only way to live life. I don't regret anything. It was nice talking to you, but I need to rush to my family. I hope we'll hear from you again!
I thought about it. There really was something to think about. I planned to go to work for a while today - I had to do a project. And then I was going to go to a club with my work colleagues. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife with a gentle kiss.
- Wake up, honey. Let's go on a picnic with the children.
- Darling, what happened?
“Nothing special, I just realized that we haven’t spent a weekend together for a long time.” Also, let's go to the toy store. I need to buy plastic balls.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru