Everybody, Always

tennis shoes while I run to save a couple of minutes. I order sushi at
restaurants so I don’t have to wait for them to cook the fish—and I don’t
even like sushi. When I’m not in a hurry, I spend my time being
impatient. It’s so extreme, sometimes I think I make coffee nervous.
While living my life this way has been working out great for me, I
started to wonder how it was working for the people around me. So I
asked them. Do you know what I found out? My impatience was driving
them nuts.
A few weeks after I asked the question, I found a beautiful kids’ book
that changed everything for me. It was a book about buckets, and its
premise was simple: we will become in our lives what we put in our
buckets. I knew I needed to fill mine with patience.
I decided to put the book to the test, so I went to a hardware store and
bought a metal bucket. I carried it with me everywhere for three weeks as
an experiment. The bucket was made of galvanized aluminum and had a
wire handle. I looked like a dairy farmer. I took my bucket with me in
cars, on sailboats, in subways—everywhere. People on airplanes would
ask if I had a bladder problem. “Actually,” I’d say jokingly, “I do.” But
then I would say, “I have an even bigger problem. I’m really impatient.” I
let them know how I use the bucket as a reminder to fill my life with
patience every day.
If we fill our buckets with a bunch of business deals, we’ll turn into
businesspeople. If we fill them with arguments, we’ll become lawyers. If
we fill them with a critical spirit, we’ll become cynics. If we fill them
with joy, we’ll experience tremendous happiness. I believed in the
concept behind the bucket so wholeheartedly, I filled my bucket with
sprinkled doughnuts one day just to see what would happen to me.
Here’s the simple message Jesus has for us: if we fill our buckets with
love, we can actually become love.