Princess and the Pea

There is an old fairy tale about a prince who was determined that he should only marry a true princess. His mother had a rather unique way of determining if someone was a true princess: have the young woman sleep on a stack of mattresses with a single pea under all of them. If she had a horrible night’s sleep because of the uncomfortableness the pea caused, then she was a true princess.

Now, setting aside many of the questions and implications I have about this story, what I want to highlight today is how often we focus on the pea and the discomfort it causes in the midst of so much comfort and excess.

Gratitude and thankfulness can get left by the wayside when we focus on the peas in our lives. I’m not saying that we should ignore hard stuff and just be PollyAnnas. What I am saying is we need perspective. Too often, we miss the good stuff, the mass of good stuff, the piled high so many mattresses of good stuff, because we focus on something insignificant.

Thankfulness as a habit creates a joy in life that even peas can’t ruin.