A little boy wanted to go outside to play. It had been
raining for two days, keeping him cooped up inside. When the sun finally came
out, he asked his mommy if he could go play. She responded, “You can, but stay
out of the mud. Your aunt is coming over for dinner tonight.”
Delighted that he was finally free to get out of the house,
the little boy rushed outside. Not long after, he came across his friends. They
were making mud pies—and it looked like a lot of fun. But then he remembered
what his mommy had said. He didn’t want to get muddy. After thinking for a
moment, he came up with a solution.
The boy sat at the edge of the muddy area and watched. Every
once in a while, his friends would ask for help, or tell him it would be okay
if he only used his hands—after all, his hands were easy enough to clean before
dinner.
Throughout the afternoon, the boy stayed on the edge, never
fully going in. At the same time, he reached in with his hands, scooped up the mud,
and pushed it around to make it form mud pies. No matter how hard he tried, the
mud pies did not turn out quite the way he wanted, and his hands got muddier
than he thought they would become.
With the sun starting to set, the little boy heard his
mother call him for dinner. He stood, said goodbye to his friends, and rushed
home. Instead of going inside, he went to the garden hose to wash off his
hands.
The mud from his hands got on the faucet as he turned it on.
Still, the clean, clear water came out the end of the hose. Knowing he was
already late for dinner, the boy cleaned off his hands the best he could, and
then went inside.
When his mother saw him, she gasped. The boy wasn’t sure why
until he looked down and noticed that despite his best efforts, small spots of
mud had splattered on his clothes.
“You played in the mud, didn’t you?” she asked.
“But I didn’t. Not really. I just sat on the edge and
reached in with my hands. And I cleaned them off? See?” He showed her his
hands. While they were mostly clean, there was dirt under his fingernails.
The mother then knelt down and looked the little boy in the
eye. In a soft tone, she said, “Sweetheart, the best way to stay clean is to
keep away from the mud the best you can.”
I’ve been thinking about this parable a lot recently. There
is so much in the world which is negative. Every time I pull up the latest news
stories, there is account after account of all the bad that is happening in the
world.
When I worked in the TV news industry, over the course of
the years, I realized that focusing on the negative all the time was impacting
me personally. I was becoming a negative person—focusing a lot on all the
little things that I thought were wrong, and in the process, losing sight on
the important good things in life.
I found that when I got home from work, I would focus on all
the little, negative things: the kids left a mess in the basement, dinner was
late, there were clothes that needed to be folded on the bed—and so on and so
on. Never mind that my wife was actually a superstar and home all day with our
four young daughters. I was losing sight of all the wonderful things in my life
because I was focusing my attention on the wrong things.
Even though I’ve left the TV world behind, and I’ve worked
hard to focus on the positive things in life, I can still get bogged down time
and again with some negative aspect which affects my whole mood.
I’ve learned that while my family isn’t perfect, there is a
lot to love about them. They make me happy. Sure, there are things that come up
which can cause stress, or even make me question certain things, but I found
that if I focus too much on these elements, I’m missing out on the bigger, more
wonderful blessings I have.
And it makes sense. After all, how long would my marriage
last if all I did was look for faults in my wife? (Granted, she’s remarkable
and it would really take some effort to find faults. She is human, though, and humans
are not perfect.) Even if I could force my wife to change things I thought were
“wrong,” unless I changed from focusing on the negative, I would constantly be
unhappy.
Yes, sometimes bad things happen; I’ll get some mud on me.
But I’ve learned that that happens less often if I stay away from the mud pit.
