MINDFUL KIDS, HAPPY KIDS!
The 99 Club Story
BY JANANI RAVIKUMAR
Once upon a time, there was a Queen who was very rich and lived a luxurious life. But she was not happy at all. She was always feeling unhappy and stressed.
One day, she was standing at her palace balcony and watched her gardener hard at work. However, the gardener was very happy. He was smiling, singing and whistling as he tended to her plants.
The Queen was puzzled. She immediately called her wise Minister, ‘How is it that the gardner is so poor but he is very happy. But I am the Queen of this entire land, and I own everything here, but still I am not happy?’
The wise Minister smiled and said, ‘Dear Queen, this gardener does not still belong to the 99 Club.’
The Queen was even more puzzled. ‘What is the 99 Club?’, she asked?
The wise Minister said, ‘Please give a bag of 99 gold coins and I shall show you.’
So the Queen gave him a bag of 99 gold coins, and the Minister went to the gardener’s hut in the dead of the night, and placed the bag just outside his door.
When the gardener woke up and came out of his house in the morning, he saw the bag of gold coins and was overjoyed. He immediately started counting the gold coins, and found them to be 99 in all. ‘What happened to the last gold coin?’, he wondered?
He searched all over his garden but could not find it anywhere. So he decided to work very hard, save money and buy the last gold coin to make it 100. From that day on, he forgot to smile, he worked extra hours, spent very little time with his family, and became tired and grumpy. He stopped singing and whistling at work.
The Queen noticed this change in the gardener and was astonished. ‘How did this happen?’ she asked the minister. The wise Minister smiled and said, ‘He has now entered the 99 Club. The 99 Club is a name given to those people who have enough to be happy but are never content, because they’re always wanting that extra one, saying to themselves: “Let me get that one final thing and then I will be happy for life. We can be happy with very little in our lives, but the minute we’re given something bigger and better, we want more …and even more! We lose our sleep, our happiness, as the price for our growing needs and desires.’
Are you part of the 99 Club? Can we be happy with the 99 good things you have, instead of complaining about the one or two things we don’t have in our life?