Friday, May 29, 2009

29 May 2009, Story for the day

Thought that the previous post was insufficient for the day. Here's a story for you.

Once a traveller was on his journey when he stopped by an old beggar sitting by the roadside and asked, "How far is it to the next town?"
The beggar remained quiet without a reply.
The traveller asked again and again but the beggar refused to answer and remained sitting as he was, quite silent.
Finally, the traveller gave up on the old beggar and decided to go on his way.
Taking a few steps, the beggar shouted out to him, "It will take you a half day to get to the next town!"
Angry, the traveller returned and confronted the beggar saying, "If you knew how far, why didn't you answer me when I first asked you?"
The beggar answered: "How could I know until I could see the stride of your steps?"
- by Yamashita Sensei

The moral of the story is, how can you expect anyone to tell you what to do when they cannot even see what you CAN do?
One of my guiding principles in life is to always put yourself in the other person's shoes. See what they're thinking. What is their motive behind their words and actions? Why?
Then you will be able to judge for yourself, the situation and what action you should take.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very good one, Bobby! It is easy to judge and to criticize but to be a real person, we need to empathize and to really have a caring heart....

Take care and have a good weekend!

Shalom

Tiger said...

Thanks, MWS.
One of my passions is to unearth little gems of Eastern wisdoms like this one.
You have a good weekend too!