One day when my daughter was about two years old, she toddled into the room holding a shiny yellow pencil with the sharp point up. Of course, I quickly took it away—or tried to. She held on to it tenaciously. At that moment, it was the most important thing in her life. When I finally was able to gently pry it out of her hand, she was devastated. Normally good-natured, she buried her face in the carpet and sobbed. 

I tried to explain that when she was a bit older, she could have all the pencils she wanted, and that pencils weren’t all that important anyway. This had no effect, and I realized there was nothing I could do but try to comfort her, knowing that she would realize the truth in her own time. A trivial incident, but perhaps one with a useful lesson. 

Many times I’ve felt that some object or job or relationship was essential to my happiness. Such things may seem far more important than a mere pencil, yet I’m not sure any of them were more important to me at a given moment than that shiny yellow pencil was to my daughter at that moment in her young life.