Story about happiness: How many "clay balls" have you thrown away?

A man was exploring caves by a seashore when he found a bag full of hardened clay balls. The balls looked like someone had intentionally rolled the clay and left them out in the sun to bake. Perhaps some children made them while they were at the beach, the man thought to himself. They didn’t look much, but it didn’t feel right to him to throw away something that he could use to at least pass the time with on the beach. So he took the bag out of the cave with him.

As he strolled along the beach, he threw the clay balls one by one out to the oceans as far as he could. The clay balls would fly and disappear into the ocean. The man threw several clay balls in the ocean until he dropped one of the balls and it cracked open. Inside the clay was a beautiful, precious stone.

This excited the man and he started breaking the remaining clay balls. Each of them contained different types of precious stones. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in twenty clay balls that he still had. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach for a long time and he must have thrown away many clay balls with hidden treasure into the sea. He could have had a treasure worth tens of thousands rather than just thousands if only he had known what he knows now and would have not thrown the clay balls away.