A lesson in life

 

A Lesson in Life

 

 

…and as the teacher stood in front of his students, he pulled out a large, wide mouthed glass jar and filled it with stones about 5 cm in diameter. Then he asked his students:

 

“Is the jar full, now?”

 

The students all agreed that the jar was full, so the teacher grabbed a bunch of pebbles and put them on top of the stones. The pebbles all trickled down between the larger stones and the teacher asked again:

 

“Is the jar full, now?” and the students once again agreed that yes, now the jar was full.

So the teacher grabbed a bag of gravel, poured it over the pebbles, shook the jar a bit and watched the gravel come to rest neatly between the pebbles. He looked at the students without a word and most of them nodded in agreement.

 

Then he grabbed a bag of fine sand from the beach and did his little routine one more time while the students, now, were all smiling, ‘cause obviously they had clued in by now.

 

“Ok, so I want you to imagine the jar is your life”, the teacher said.

“The big stones are the important things in your life; your wife, your parents, your husband, your kids, your family, your health…that kind of things” he said.

“The big stones are things that if you lose everything else in life, your life will still be full with these things. These things are the really important ones in your life.”

 

“The pebbles are things that are not quite as important as the big stones in your life, so we are talking your friends, your job, your house, your car…that kind of stuff.”

 

“The gravel are the things in your life that really means much of nothing; your clothes, your looks…things that are meaningless in the bigger scheme of things.”

 

“Everything else is just…sand on the beach”.

 

“So!”, he continued, “if at first you fill the jar with sand and gravel, you will have no space for the pebbles and the stones, and the same goes for your life. If you waste all your time and energy filling up your life with junk and useless clutter, you will have no space for the big and meaningful things in your life.”

 

“Always focus your life on what exactly is important to you, and your life will be filled with joy and happiness; play with your kids, make time for your doctors’ appointment so your health can be in top, spend happy time with your partner and still there will be lots of time to go to work, clean the house and lots of other ‘sand and gravel’.

 

“Fill your life with big stones. Things that are really important. Get your priorities straight and pick the big stones first, because everything else is just sand and gravel”.

 

…at this point the teacher now pulls out a beer. He looks quietly out over the wondering students…and then he very slowly pours the entire beer over the stones and into the sand.

 

“…and the morale of the story”, he says to the flabbergasted students as he looks up, “is that no matter what the Hell happens in your life…there is always room for a beer!!!”

 

 

 

(Thank you to my dad whom, I suppose, got a little tired of my ‘smart-ass comments’ on how to live his life, so he emailed me his own take on ‘how to improve your life’. This English version is translated from his own Danish version)