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June 8, 2025 26 mins
Matai leaves his island home one day to find the true meaning of peace and returns many years later, having learned an important lesson.

Narrated by: Elizabeth Grace
Written by: Lottie Finklaire

Welcome to Snuggle! The best kid's story-telling podcast. Enter a cozy world of imagination perfect for bedtime, quiet time, or any time you want to embark on an enchanting adventure. 

Our cozy stories present a wide selection of calming tales for not just kids and toddlers, but for the whole family too! Enjoy some relaxing family time every day, when the children can parents can snuggle up together and venture into imaginative worlds, fairy tales, and other heartwarming stories. Develop deeper connections when you make Snuggle stories a routine at bedtime or anytime!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Snuggle Cozy Stories for kids. This episode is
called The Coconut Tree. Snuggle is a production of Slumber Studios.
To listen ad free and support the show, sign up
for our premium feed. Hey friend, thanks so much for

(00:28):
joining me again. My name is Tom, and I'm so
happy you're here. For my favorite part of any day,
story time, our friend Elizabeth will be telling us a
lovely tale today. It's about a boy who lives on
a tropical island and makes a wish on a fallen coconut.

(00:56):
So make sure you're nice and comfy wherever you're settled
right now. Enjoy me in taking some slow refreshing breaths,
breathing in gently and back out softly. Once more, breathing

(01:24):
in and back out nicely. Done. Now, let's imagine a
far away island in the middle of the sea. This

(01:45):
is where our story.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Begins, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, where the water is

(02:08):
clear bloom, and the air is always warm. There is
a row of islands. Some islands are big and some
islands are small, but all of them are covered in

(02:29):
lush tropical jungles, and all of them have beautiful beaches
made of creamy sand that melts into the sea and
turns it turquoise. So when you look at these islands

(02:52):
from above, they look like magical, glittering jaws. On the
tiniest island there lived a boy called Mattie. He had

(03:13):
lived on the island all of his life. He knew
everything about his simple village life and how it was
to grow up with nature all around him. But he
was not going to be a boy forever. That's why

(03:36):
our story begins with the night before his seventeenth birthday.
It was a calm and peaceful night. The air was
thick and heavy because the rains had come that day.

(03:59):
The sky was indigo and navy because the sun had
only just disappeared behind the sea, and the waves were
gentle as they slapped against the sandy shore because tonight

(04:21):
the ocean was at peace. Matt I wandered along the beach,
dragging his feet through the fine, powdery sand. He liked
to feel it run through his toes and over the

(04:43):
tops of his feet. He especially liked to do it
when he had some serious thinking to do. You see,
tonight was the night before his seventeenth birthday. Tomorrow he

(05:04):
was going to sail on his father's tiny boat and
head east for the mainland. He wasn't worried about sailing.
He had sailed all his life. That wasn't what bothered

(05:24):
him this evening. What bothered him was the lesson he
was supposed to be learning. It was customary, you see,
for all the boys to decide what they wanted to
learn about life before they woke up on their special birthday.

(05:50):
Some chose to learn about money, some chose to learn
about love, and others chose to learn about knowledge. Whatever
they chose, they had to carve it into the side

(06:11):
of their boat before leaving. The trouble was that matt
I couldn't decide what he most wanted to learn about.
He had six older brothers that had all been to
the mainland and come back, and they had all told

(06:33):
him about everything they had learned. He had already heard
about love and knowledge and money and a lot of
other things. He didn't want to have to learn about
them all again. His mind wandered to his family house.

(06:59):
It was always so full and busy. Brothers, wives, children,
all of them were always coming and going, squawking and chattering.
There was always something on the stove something being burned,

(07:24):
something being cleaned. There was never any peace. Then Mattie's
foot collided with something round and hard. He looked down

(07:44):
to see a coconut, fresh from off the tree. He smiled.
There was an old wive's tale on the island that
if you ran into a coconut, it meant that you
were going in the right direction. Matt i picked it

(08:07):
up in his hands. He felt its weight and the
liquid inside of it sloshing around. Peace. That's what he
wanted to learn about. Where could he find the greatest

(08:29):
peace in life? Carefully, he carried the coconut to the
edge of the jungle. He didn't know what made him
do it, but he noticed an odd clearing in between
three jagged rocks, and he felt the weight of the

(08:54):
coconut shift. Before he knew it, he was digging a deep,
deep hole right in the center of the clearing. When
the hole felt deep enough, he lowered the coconut into

(09:16):
it and made a wish to learn where he could
find the greatest peace in life. Then he covered the
coconut with the earth and the sand, feeling it gritty
against his fingers, he patted the top layer, smoothed and

(09:42):
he cupped his hands to carry water from the nearest
puddle to pour over the top. Then he made his
way home. The next morning, Mattie woke up to the sun.

(10:05):
He dressed in his traveling clothes and packed up all
he would need for the journey. When he came into
the kitchen, his whole family cheered for him and patted
him on the back. His mum brought out his favorite

(10:26):
breakfast of sweet banana pancakes, and everyone sang songs for him.
Then they all hurried off to the harbor, where the
little wooden boat sat waiting for Mattie. Mattie took a

(10:49):
special pointed tool in his hand and approached the boat.
There on the side were all the lessons that his
brothers and his father and his father's father had asked for.

(11:11):
All the men in his family had etched their mark
into the wood. Matt Ie ran his fingers over the words.
They felt rough and bumpy to the touch. Then he

(11:32):
took his tool and etched peace in the space left
for him. He liked the way the wood gave way
underneath the tool. It felt a bit like the feeling
of scraping wax off a flat surface. He threw his

(11:57):
bag into the boat, turned to his family. Finally, after
many hugs and kisses and goodbyes and good luck wishes,
Mattie hoisted the sail and headed out into the deep,

(12:19):
wide blue of the Pacific Ocean. It took Mattie twenty
one days to reach the mainland, and his story of
sailing we can tell on another night, but it's safe

(12:42):
to say that he reached the land already older and
wiser than he had been before, and when he got there,
he started his task of learning to live a life
he had never lived before. Or The mainland was busy,

(13:07):
much busier than Matthia's island. Here there were only cities
and towns, cars and buses, trains and airplanes. It seemed
to Mattie that everything was always moving. He could hardly

(13:35):
keep up with the people and the way they walked
and talked, as if there was always something urgent to do.
But he knew he had to join them, and so
as quickly as he could, he found himself a place

(13:56):
to stay in, the place to work so he could
work on his mission, and before he knew it, he
was a part of the main man. Many months passed,
but I worked many different jobs. He made many different friends.

(14:24):
He lived in many different parts the cities and towns.
He took many holidays, and he visited many places to
search for the greatest peace. But no matter where he looked,

(14:44):
he never seemed to find it. There was always something
to do, someone to see, something to say or listen to. Slowly,
his family grew concerned. They would send him messages asking

(15:09):
him to come home, but Mattie always said no. The
months turned slowly into years, Mattie's hair started to turn gray,
and still he had not learned where to find the

(15:32):
greatest peace at home. His family wondered what might have
happened to him. The men in his family had even
built another boat because they feared that Mattie would never return. Then,

(15:54):
one day, when his brothers were old and crowned with
white hair, and their sons had sons of their own,
matt I returned. He came to land in the evening,

(16:15):
when the sun was just sinking below the scene and
everyone would be busy with their dinner. He wasn't ready
to tell his family that he had not found what
he had set out to learn so many years ago.

(16:37):
He brought his boat to the beach instead of the harbor,
and his heart was full of emotions. But when he
jumped down from the boat and felt the soft sand
between his toes a one, a full sense of calm

(17:03):
washed over him. He tied up the boat and breathed
in the salty air that was thick and heavy because
the rains had come that day. He began to walk

(17:24):
along his beach, dragging his feet in the sand, just
like he had done all those years back. He was
thinking about all the times he used to walk like that.

(17:45):
When he remembered the coconut, he wondered what had happened
to it. So he walked quietly up the beach and
took towards the jungle. He was just about to reach

(18:07):
the jungle's edge when his jaw dropped. There in front
of him, in a clearing between three jagged rocks, was
the most magnificent coconut tree. Its leaves were lush and green.

(18:35):
They fanned out like great wings. Its trunk was slender
and creamy brown. Nestled in its top were bunches of
great round coconuts. Perched in between the leaves were birds

(19:02):
of all colors and shapes. They cooed softly and beat
their wings gracefully. At the bottom of the tree, where
the leaves provided shade, small plants had grown. Their delicate

(19:29):
pink and white flowers were open now, and small bees
hummed between them. Matt I sat down under the coconut
tree and felt a wave of pure peace move through him.

(19:55):
How wonderful that his coconut had grown up so big,
big enough to provide shelter for more life. He felt
the earth beneath him and looked up at the green
leaves of the tree. Something about the light bouncing off

(20:21):
them made him feel good and happy. Just being here
and looking at all the beauty made him feel still,
and soon he closed his eyes and felt a very

(20:46):
deep sense of peace bobbling up inside him. The tree
was so still, so silent, and so beautiful. All of

(21:06):
a sudden, Matti realized the truth. Whilst he had been away,
busy searching for peace, peace had been growing here all
this time. True peace was with nature, quietly growing and existing.

(21:38):
As Mattie sat with his eyes closed, he remembered all
the time he had spent in nature as a boy,
swimming in the sea and dragging his feet through the sand.
How peaceful and happy he had been. He chuckled to himself.

(22:04):
It had taken him a whole lifetime to realize what
he had taken for granted as a child. But the
tie was done with hard work. He was not going
to be hard on himself now. He leaned back so

(22:27):
the trunk rested in between his shoulder blades. He felt
the warmth of the sun baked into its bark. It
felt so good to rest there. He felt himself take

(22:50):
a great breath in It filled up his lungs with
the sweet evening air. As he breathed out, it was
as if he was letting go of his lifetime on

(23:11):
the mainland. The struggles and busyness melted away. Suddenly, it
was as if he was seventeen years old again. Resting
after a long day of playing on the island, he

(23:39):
felt his body relaxed and his eyelids grow heavier and
slowly gently he drifted off to sleep, where he dreamed
of coconut out the trees and sunrises, and all the

(24:07):
precious gifts that Mother Nature shows us every day. He

(26:01):
s
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