Once upon a time, there was a man named Thomas who lived in a small, quiet house. He wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t miserable, either. He just lived a regular, normal life.
Then, one magical day, everything changed!
Thomas owned a beautiful, snowy-white goose. She was plump and perfectly ordinary—until she laid her eggs. Every single morning, when Thomas went out to the coop, he didn’t find a plain white egg. Instead, he found a single, glittering, perfect egg made of pure gold!
“Goodness gracious!” Thomas cried, his eyes wide as saucers.
Soon, Thomas was buying new clothes and a bigger house. He was the happiest man in the whole village! Every single morning, he had his little golden surprise.
But as the days went by and his pockets grew full, a very sneaky, ugly little feeling started to grow in Thomas’s heart. That feeling was greed.
Thomas would stand over the beautiful goose and frown. “One egg!” he’d complain, tapping his foot. “Why should I wait until tomorrow for the next one? I bet she has all the gold in the world inside her right now!”
He stopped seeing the goose as a treasure-giver. He only saw her as a gold container that wasn’t opening fast enough. He imagined a huge, sparkling mountain of gold inside her tummy.
Driven by his terrible, impatient greed, Thomas made a dreadful mistake. One morning, instead of taking the one golden egg, he took a sharp knife and, in a moment of madness, hurt his wonderful goose.
“I’ll have it all now!” he thought fiercely.
With shaky hands, he looked inside. He searched and searched, expecting a massive, shiny pile of treasure. But what did he find?
Nothing!
There was no magical mountain of gold, no secret vault, nothing special at all. His lovely goose was just a goose, now gone forever.
Thomas slumped down onto the straw, his heart heavy and cold. He had killed the source of his happiness, the magic that kept giving him treasure every day, all because he couldn’t wait. He had wanted everything, but by being so greedy, he was left with absolutely nothing.The Lesson: Always be thankful for the good things you have, even if they come slowly. If you get too greedy and try to grab everything at once, you might lose all the wonderful things you already had!
