A story of two egg-farmers

Listening to a talk the other night, I heard the following story:

There were two egg-farmers who went out to their chicken coops each morning. The first collected all the chicken scat he could find, and left the eggs in his coop to rot. As a consequence, his house was full of chicken scat, his business suffered, and no one ever wanted to visit his aweful-smelling house. The second farmer carefully removed the chicken scat from his coop to fertilize the garden where he grew feed for the chickens, and took the eggs back to his house. There he cooked some for breakfast, and sold the rest for cash. Everyone liked to visit the second farmer, because his eggs were quality, he cooked them for you if you happen to show up at breakfast, and his house didn't smell like scat.

The story serves as a metaphor for life, in that many of us are like the first farmer; we hold onto negative thoughts (scat) and leave the positive (eggs) to rot. It's not to say negative thinking has no place; live chickens always poop, and live humans almost always think negative thoughts. But as the second farmer shows us, we don't need to bring it into the house to use it. It can nourish our thinking, but it needn't define it. Something to consider anyway.

Happy Saturday, friends :)