Once upon a time there was a beautiful peacock that had all the colours of the rainbow in his feathers. Everywhere he went, he was admired. Everyone wanted to touch or have a selfie with him. The peacock admired all the attention and was quite happy that he was the centre of the zoo. All the other peacocks were jealous that unlike them, which had mostly blue plumage, he was so rare and special with all his rainbow colours.
Day in and day out, the peacock would spread his wings for people to admire and take photos. His confidence was at the top. He felt he had the best life ever! He didn’t care what all the other peacocks in the zoo said about him and he was no friends of theirs. He was invincible with his rainbow plumage.
…or so he thought…
One day, out of the blue, his feathers started falling and losing their colour. The peacock lost his shine and splendour. He got worried and sad and didn’t know what was happening. People didn’t want to take photos of him anymore. The zoo people took him to specialist after specialist with no success. They could not do anything for him. He was hiding in a corner and didn’t want to talk to anyone. The rest of the peacocks left him in peace but this tiny little one who approached him with an open and loving heart and started being with him. Accepting the peacock for who he was. Accepting him going through changes. the once glorious peacock at first didn’t bother for the tiny peacock but then sensing the genuineness of the love and desire to help from the tiny peacock, a special bond was created between the two. The tiny peacock was always so curious of what was going on with the older peacock and asked him a lot of questions.
Sometimes the old peacock would not know the answer of all those questions and that made him think when he was in his lonely corner. It made him think of all his life – what has been the meaning of that. It made him think what principles and values had guided his life so far. He started realising that the way he had done things was not what he truly wanted for himself and what he wanted to be remembered for.
Every day he was looking forward to spend time with the little peacock – it gave him joy and willingness to live and enjoy life. He slowly started to come out of his corner, interact with others, connect, taking an interest in what others were thinking and doing and suddenly a shift happened with him.
His joy could be noticed from others…his energy and his plumage started to shine through again. The most important thing is that he was happy – genuinely happy and fulfilled. And his happiness was not because of his outer beauty but because now he had found his purpose of living. And his little companion was a big part of that process.
