There was a sick child named John who suffered from a rare and dangerous disease. All the doctors confirmed that he wouldn’t live long, even though they couldn’t determine the exact remaining time for him. Despite that, John spent many days in the hospital, sad because he didn’t know what would happen to him.
One day, one of the clowns passing near his room saw him and saw how sad John was. He entered his room and said to him: Why do you stand sad like this? Didn’t anyone tell you about the paradise dedicated to sick children? John shook his head and said no, but continued to listen attentively to the clown.
The clown completed his speech, saying: Well, it’s the best place you can imagine, much better than parents’ paradise or anyone else’s. They say that God made that paradise a gift to children as compensation for what they suffered because of their illness, but there’s one condition for entering that paradise.
John asked with interest: What is this condition? The clown said: You cannot die without filling the bag. John wondered in surprise: The bag? The clown said: Yes, yes, the bag, a large gray bag like this. Then the clown pulled one from under his coat and gave it to John.
He said to him: You’re lucky with me, you have one, but you must fill it with notes until you can buy your ticket to paradise. John said: Notes? No use in that. I don’t have any money to buy anything. The clown said: No, they’re not ordinary notes, my little one.
They are special notes about good deeds, pieces of paper on which you write everything good you do, then put it in the bag. At night, an angel will come and verify all these papers, and if he finds them good, he will grant you tickets to paradise. John asked him: Do you really say that? The clown said: Of course.
But make sure to quickly fill your bag. You’ve been sick for a long time, and we don’t know if you have enough time to fill that bag. This is a unique opportunity for you, and you cannot die before completing it. That would be terrible shame!
The clown was in a hurry. When he left the room, John stood in pain, staring at the bag. What his new friend told him was wonderful. He had nothing to lose by trying. On the same day, when John’s mother arrived to see him, he gave her his best smiles and made more effort to be more joyful than usual, knowing that this made her happy.
When he was alone, he wrote on a piece of paper: Today I smiled at my mother and made her smile, then put the piece of paper in the bag. On the morning of the next day, as soon as he woke up, John ran to see the bag, and there was a real ticket to paradise! The ticket looked magical and wonderful to the extent that it filled the room with sparkling lights.
John spent the rest of that day doing everything beautiful and wonderful. He helped doctors and nurses and worked with children who felt lonely. He even told jokes to his little brother and took some books to study a little. For each of those things he did, he put a paper in his bag.
Thus, John continued in the same state. Every day he would wake up enthusiastic to get several new tickets to paradise. He kept working to get many of them. Indeed, he did everything he could because he realized that it was good to collect tickets in the bag in any possible way.
Every night, the angel would arrange them in a way that they took only a small space in the bag, which forced John to continue doing good work at maximum speed until he filled the bag before he became extremely sick. Although he spent several days in this, he didn’t fill the bag.
But John became the most loved child in the hospital, and he did that in the most joyful and beneficial way. The matter ended with his complete healing. No one knew how that happened. Some said: His happiness and his daily positive attitudes helped him greatly in his treatment.
While others were convinced that the hospital staff loved him very much, to the extent that they spent extra hours trying to find treatment and provide him with the best care. There were those who said that two elderly millionaires, whom John had made very happy during their illness, paid for his expensive treatment costs.
The truth is that all these things were real because, as the wise clown said many times: You only need to put a little paradise in your old gray bag every night to turn what seems like a fading life into a real paradise. These are the best days of your life, so live life with joy no matter how long or short its duration.