“The world is my oyster” means the world is yours to enjoy. Happiness is at your fingertips. Such a positive statement. Or is it?

Yes, there might be a pearl inside but an oyster is hard to open. Even Pistol from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor (who coined the phrase), was ready to use his sword to steal his fortune (get to the pearl).

Well, we can’t steal happiness.

An oyster is hard to open.

I suppose we could fork out the $50+ bucks for an oyster machine on Amazon. But that would be like having our joy handed to us on a silver platter at the cost of no effort.

An oyster is hard to open.

To start with, you have to have the right too kind of knives and a durable, cut resistant glove. Metaphorically, you need to have power and a thick skin.

Do we agree that opening our oyster to find the pearl is not an easy task?

But aren’t the best-reached goals the ones reached with grit and determination?

Although some of the oysters I managed to open over the years had no treasure inside, I still managed to collect many pearls. I hope you have, too. And probably like me, some were harder to obtain than others. Were they worth the effort?

Let’s toast to our pearls, past, present and future.