It’s hard to imagine that balloons could teach you a life lesson, but this university professor utilized them in a unique way.
The professor abruptly stopped his lecture one day in order to impart some valuable knowledge to his 100 students.
He gave each of the students a balloon and asked them to blow it up and write their name on it. Then he told them to put their balloon in the room next door.
After they were all done, they gathered outside the room that was now filled with balloons.
“You have five minutes,” the professor explained, “to go into the other room, find your balloon and return to the lecture theater.”
The five minutes quickly went by, and no one found their balloon. They all came back out of the room.
Then the professor changed the way they looked for the balloons--they would now look for balloons with other people’s names on them, and give them to those people. Everyone got their balloon before the five minutes elapsed.
“This is an analogy,” the professor explained. “This is exactly what’s happening in our lives. Everyone is frantically looking for happiness but no one knows where to find it. Our happiness lies in the hands of other people. If you give them their happiness, you will get your own happiness. And this is the meaning of life.”
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