Last spring I read the book How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton. Basically, the concept of the bucket is that we all have an imaginary bucket that hangs over our heads that gets filled when we do or say good things for other people or they do or say good things for us. Alternatively, our bucket gets a dip taken out of it when bad things are said or done to us and when we do or say bad things....
I thought it was an interesting concept but last spring, I was convinced that I certainly had a leaky bucket....a bucket full of holes. And the holes had been put there by the people who had really hurt me badly....so they had done more that take a dip out of my bucket but wounded my bucket permanently. At that time, I thought it was my job to try to patch the bucket somehow...and make do.
Four months later...I have a new take on the bucket.
The way I was thinking before...gave other people power over my bucket. Other people can certainly fill or empty it..but I am talking about the bucket itself. The physical bucket. I don't think God gave us buckets that are not bulletproof...or buckets that would spring a leak. So, I don't think that other people can shoot holes in them.
Now, i see it differently. I think that WE choose to put a lid on our bucket. We have power over our bucket....whether to allow it be filled or emptied. It is not others who damage our buckets...but us...by putting the lid on and closing it up tight. We make a choice to not take the risk...because someone might take a dip out...we put the lid on and then we don't let the good in either.
And then, something sad happens...we forget what good looks like. And when we are ready to be filled again and want to take the lid off, it seems like we can't get filled....
To let our bucket be filled...we have to be able to recognize the good. Otherwise, how can it be filled? Putting a lid on our bucket is like putting blinders on. Choosing not to see the good things...
So, what we need to do is open our eyes. We need to retrain ourselves attend to and to appreciate the small things. Good things happen all the time. They don't jump up at us waving a flag saying "look at me!" Some of them do...but most of them don't.
In the book, it says there are 20,000 moments in a day. I have to believe that thousands of them are good...many of them may be mundane, and some of them not so good. But, thousand of them have to be good.
Like today, for example...
* I got to see a gibbon suck it's thumb... :)
* I saw a child who looked to be about 18 months old kiss her daddy...and this child had Down's Syndrome...and it was good to see the love between them
* a car on the highway let me over when I needed to merge in a construction zone
* someone said excuse me when they bumped in to me...using good manners....it is good
* my children showed compassion
* my mom called me "daughter"
* my son woke me up by holding me
* the lady at the food court let me trade the bag of snack chips for a different kind even though she wasn't supposed to
See, there are all kinds of good things to see...we just need to take the lid off our bucket and open our eyes and let our bucket be filled.
I thought about the scene from Steele Magnolias all day today when Sally Field's character, Malynn, begs her daughter, "Open your eyes, Shelby! Open your eyes!" It is a very emotional scene.
And I think that we should be as equally emotional about us opening our eyes to the good...we desperately need to see the good.
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