The Hen

After a night of drinking, Ben crept into bed beside his wife who was already asleep. He gave her a peck on the cheek and fell asleep. When he awoke he found a strange man standing at the end of his bed wearing a long flowing white robe. "Who the heck are you?" demanded , "and what are you doing in my bedroom?"

The mysterious Man answered, "This isn't your bedroom and I'm St.Peter. Ben was stunned, "You mean I'm dead!!! That can't be, I have so much too live for, I haven't said good-bye to my family.... you've got to send me back right away." St Peter replied, "Yes, you can be reincarnated but there is a catch. We can only send you back as a dog or a hen. "Ben was devastated, but knowing there was a farm not far from his house, he asked to be sent back as a hen.

A flash of light later, he was covered in feathers and clucking around pecking the ground. "This ain't so bad" he thought until he felt this strange feeling welling up inside him. The farmyard rooster strolled over and said, "So you're the new hen, how are you enjoying your first day here?" "It's not so bad," replies Ben, "but I have this strange feeling inside like I'm about to explode."You're ovulating," explained the rooster, "don't tell me you've never laid an egg before." "Never," replies Ben. "Well just relax and let it happen." And so he did and after a few uncomfortable seconds later, an egg pops out from under his tail.

An immense feeling of relief swept over him and his emotions got the better of him as he experienced motherhood for the first time. When he laid his second egg, the feeling of happiness was overwhelming and he knew that being reincarnated as a hen was the best thing that had happened to him ...ever!!!

The joy kept coming and as he was just about to lay his third egg he felt an enormous smack on the back of his head and heard his wife shouting, " Ben !! Wake up you drunken bastard, you're shittin' in the bed!"

The Old Man and His Shoe

One day an old man boarded a bus. As he was going up the steps, one of his shoes slipped off. The door closed and the bus moved off so he was unable to retrieve it. The old man calmly took off his other shoe and threw it out of the window.

A young man on the bus saw what happened, and could not help going up to the old man and asking, "I noticed what you did, sir. Why did you throw out your other shoe?" The old man promptly replied, "So that whoever finds them will be able to use them." The old man in the story understood a fundamental philosophy for life - do not hold on to something simply for the sake of possessing it or because you do not wish others to have it. We lose things all the time. The loss may seem to us grievous and unjust initially, but loss only happens so that positive changes can occur in our lives. We should not always assume that losing something is bad, because if things do not shift, we'll never become better people or experience better things. That's not to say of course that we only lose "bad" things; it simply means that in order for us to mature emotionally and spiritually, and for us to contribute to the world, the interchange between loss and gain is necessary.

Like the old man in the story, we have to learn to let go. The world had decided that it was time for the old man to lose his shoe. Maybe this happened to add momentum to a series of events leading to a better pair of shoes for the old man. Maybe the search for another pair of shoes would lead the old man to a great benefactor. Maybe the world decided that someone else needed the shoes more. Whatever the reason, we can't avoid losing things. The old man understood this. One of his shoes had gone out of his reach. The remaining shoe would not have been much help to him, but it would be a cherished gift to a homeless person desperately in need of protection from the ground.

Hoarding possessions does nothing to make us or the world better. We all have to decide constantly if some things or people have run their course in our lives or would be better off with others. We then have to master the courage to give them away.