For Easter our kids engaged in an egg hunt with 4,000 eggs. The cherished prizes for the hunt were a handful of golden eggs. One of our kids found a golden egg. The other two did not.

As some of the kids were crying, I overhead one of the parents say she wished they all could be golden eggs. I wondered to myself if she really did wish that.

If all eggs were golden, it would just be another hunt. It’s the scarcity that creates the experience – the emotion. The hunt for the golden egg could not exist without the non-golden eggs.

To me, the golden egg is symbolic of life. That not every egg is golden is the beauty behind life. It’s the differences among us that creates the experience – the emotion. Just as if every egg was golden, there would be just eggs – If all of us were the same, life would be flat. That some of us are not golden (beautiful, tall, smart, (you fill in the blank)) allows the golden to exist. It’s the differences among us that creates the experience – the scarcity that creates the emotion.

We may all think we want to be golden eggs. But it’s the non-golden eggs that allow the golden eggs to exist.

Today I give thanks to the non-golden eggs.

Timothy Velner is a husband, father, attorney and author living in Minneapolis. You can follow his daily blog – a series of discussions between the worry-self and the present-self at – thespiritualgym.me