Imagine that each day you give beautiful gifts to someone you love. Picture them with a small pile of beautifully wrapped presents beside them.
Now picture this:
The person ignores the gifts. Doesn’t even look at the pile. Instead, they think about all the people in the world who are suffering. Every day, they spend most of their time feeling sad or angry about the suffering and injustice in the world.
You love this person and want them to feel happy. Every day you give them gifts. They continue to ignore the gifts and focus on the suffering in the world.
The person spends 90% of their time being sad and angry about the suffering in the world, and 10% of their time trying to do something to help make the world a better place. During their 90% of sad-mad time, they radiate sadness and anger to the cloud of sadness and anger hovering over the world. This cloud grows bigger and bigger, with billions of other people also adding to it daily. The cloud begins to weigh heavy on the people. It drains their energy. They become less able to do helpful things during their 10% of time spent taking action and focusing on solutions to the world suffering.
Imagine this: you give gifts to EVERY person each day and nearly EVERY person ignores them.
Beside each person, there is a pile of beautifully wrapped presents which they ignore.
Inside some of the gifts, you have given each person tools to contribute joy and help to the world in their own unique way. If they used these tools, they would help shrink and lighten the heavy cloud of sadness and anger. If they used these tools, they could help the suffering people to have less suffering. But they don’t know this because they never unwrap the presents.
Inside some of the gifts, you have given each person beautiful things that would give them joy. This joy would add to the cloud of joy floating in the world. If the cloud of joy grew bigger, it would take over the space the cloud of sadness and anger occupies. The cloud of sadness and anger would shrink as it was replaced by joy. The cloud of sadness and anger hovering over the world, would stop weighing heavy on people. They would have more energy to do helpful things to reduce the suffering of others. But people never notice or open the joy gifts, because they are focusing on the suffering of others.
You never give up on people and you keep giving them gifts every day. Your love for them is unconditional. Your patience is awesome.
Every now and then, a random person will open one gift. Instead of, for example, imagining all the unwanted cats suffering in the world, one day for a few minutes they will suddenly think instead, “There are so many people who love their cats deeply.” Your gift – love between humans and cats – will send a million images and emotions of purring, deeply happy cats being loved and adored by their humans into the person’s mind. Joy will flood through the person as these images and emotions pour through them. They will radiate this joy into the cloud of joy floating through the world. There will be a droplet more of light, joy, and energy in the world, and one fewer droplet of sadness and anger. The person will have a tiny extra bit of energy that day, to invest in their 10% of actions and solutions to help people.
Maybe someone opens a gift of beauty. They notice a beautiful flower and it fills them with joy and wonder. They radiate this joy into the world cloud of joy.
Sometimes a person will open a gift that gives them a tool to help change the world in a good way. They might not realize it at the time, that this is a tool. Maybe the gift they open is a conversation with another person, where instead of talking about sadness and anger, they happen to talk about ideas and possibilities. It inspires them to do some little thing that they are uniquely good at, and this leads to other possibilities and conversations. Eventually the person ends up creating something that reduces suffering and adds joy to many people’s lives. All along, the person was doing something that comes naturally to them and gives them joy, so they did not realize they would be helping to reduce suffering. They believed that the way to reduce suffering in the world was to ignore all the gifts piled up around them, avoid feeling joy, and instead, immerse themselves in anger and sadness and feeling the suffering of others, and work hard. They believed that feeling joy while others are suffering, is a selfish thing. They did not realize that joy is the way to reduce suffering and spread more joy in the world. They did not realize how EASY and ENJOYABLE it can be to help the world, when you’re using your gifts (tools) that come naturally to you.
Somehow, most people got the message that we are supposed to suffer and work hard in order to create a good world and help others (and ourselves). But the truth is, life is meant to be easy and filled with joy. It starts with noticing and appreciating all the gifts the Universe gives us every single day. Some call this gratitude.
The next step is to look inside ourselves at the gifts we’ve been given that are tools… our unique, natural abilities that are easy for us and give us joy to use.
Now picture this. Each DAY, everyone opens ALL their new gifts. Each day, everyone spends 90% of their time feeling joy and adding joy to the world. Each day, everyone has amazing energy during their 10% actions and solutions time, as they use their innate, unique tools to effortlessly help others in the world.
Imagine that you are the Universe, feeling infinite JOY as people finally notice and appreciate the gifts you’ve been giving to them since the beginning of time, and as you see the cloud of joy growing and lighting up the whole world.
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