A New Year Let's Start Off Being Happy!

One upon a time in the forest there lived a crow that was absolutely happy with his life. But one day he saw a swan on the lake.

- Dr. Marc Clark

“This swan is so white,” he thought, “and I am so black. This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.” The crow flew over to the swan at the edge of the lake and expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I use to feel that I was the happiest bird around until I saw this parrot in the trees, which had two colors. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.” The crow sought out the parrot and approached him. The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock. I had only two colors, but the peacock had multiple colors.”

The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of visitors had gathered around his cage to see him. After the sightseers left, the crow approached the peacock and said,

“Mr. Peacock, you are so, so beautiful. Every day hundreds of visitors come to see you. In my case, when people see me, they immediately shoo me away. I think you must be the happiest bird on the face of the earth.”

The peacock replies, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this cage, in this zoo. I have examined the zoo very carefully, and I have realized that the crow, like yourself, is the only bird not kept closed in a cage. So, for a long time now, I’ve been thinking that if I were like you, a crow, I could happily roam everywhere.”

Is that not the problem with all of us? We make unnecessary comparison with others and become sad. We don’t value what gifts we have been given to us. This all leads to the vicious cycle of unhappiness.