To Love and to be Loved

Once upon a time ….

 

A very poor man lived with his wife. One day, his wife, who had very long hair asked him to buy her a comb for her hair to grow well and to be well-groomed.

 

The man felt very sorry and said no. He explained that he did not even have enough money to fix the strap of his watch he had just broken.

 

She did not insist on her request.

 

The man went to work and passed by a watch shop, sold his damaged watch at a low price and went to buy a comb for his wife.

He came home in the evening with the comb in his hand ready to give to his wife.

 

He was surprised when he saw his wife with a very short hair cut. She had sold her hair and was holding a new watch band.

 

Tears flowed simultaneously from their eyes, not for the futility of their actions, but for the reciprocity of their love.

 

Moral of the story: To love is nothing, to be loved is something but to love and to be loved by the one you love, that is everything.

The Value of Knowledge

A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

 

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young.

He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

 

Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do.

After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something.

 

Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

 

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

 

“What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!”

 

So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”

 

The man sent a bill that read:

 

Tapping with a hammer…… …… ……… $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap……… …… ……… $ 9,998.00

 

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference! Keep studying hard. Don’t give up!

The Blind Boy.

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.”

 

There were only a few coins in the hat.

 

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were.

 

The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

 

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”

What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”

 

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

 

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

 

Moral of the story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively.

 

Invite others towards good with wisdom. Live life with no excuse and love with no regrets. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.

 

Great men say, “Life has to be an incessant process of repair and reconstruction, of discarding evil and developing goodness…. In the journey of life, if you want to travel without fear, you must have the ticket of a good conscience.”

 

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling… And even more beautiful is, knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

A Perfectionist Sculpture

A gentleman once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby.

 

Surprised, he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statues of the same idol?”

 

“No,” said the sculptor without looking up, “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.”

 

The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. “Where is the damage?” he asked.

 

“There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.” said the sculptor, still busy with his work.

 

“Where are you going to install the idol?”

 

The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high.

 

“If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?” the gentleman asked.

 

The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said,

“I know it and God knows it!”

 

Moral – The desire to excel should be exclusive of the fact whether someone appreciates it or not. Excellence is a drive from inside, not outside. Excel at a task today – not necessarily for someone else to notice but for your own satisfaction.

Enjoy your life at every moment.

Once a fisherman was sitting near seashore, under the shadow of a tree smoking his beedi. Suddenly a rich businessman passing by approached him and enquired as to why he was sitting under a tree smoking and not working. To this the poor fisherman replied that he had caught enough fishes for the day.

 

Hearing this the rich man got angry and said: Why don’t you catch more fishes instead of sitting in shadow wasting your time?

Fisherman asked: What would I do by catching more fishes?

Businessman: You could catch more fishes, sell them and earn more money, and buy a bigger boat.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could go fishing in deep waters and catch even more fishes and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could buy many boats and employ many people to work for you and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could become a rich businessman like me.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could then enjoy your life peacefully.

Fisherman: What do you think I’m doing right now?

MORAL – You don’t need to wait for tomorrow to be happy and enjoy your life. You don’t even need to be more rich, more powerful to enjoy life. LIFE is at this moment, enjoy it fully.

As some great men have said “My riches consist not in extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants”.

An example of True Love

One day, a young guy and a young girl fell in love. But the guy came from a poor family. The girl’s parents weren’t too happy. So the young man decided not only to court the girl but to court her parents as well.

 

In time, the parents saw that he was a good man and was worthy of their daughter’s hand. But there was another problem: The man was a soldier. Soon, war broke out and he was being sent overseas for a year. The week before he left, the man knelt on his knee and asked his lady love, “Will you marry me?” She wiped a tear, said yes, and they were engaged. They agreed that when he got back in one year, they would get married.

 

 

But tragedy struck. A few days after he left, the girl had a major vehicular accident. It was a head-on collision. When she woke up in the hospital, she saw her father and mother crying. Immediately, she knew there was something wrong. She later found out that she suffered brain injury. The part of her brain that controlled her face muscles was damaged. Her once lovely face was now disfigured. She cried as she saw herself in the mirror. “Yesterday, I was beautiful. Today, I’m a monster.” Her body was also covered with so many ugly wounds. Right there and then, she decided to release her fiancé from their promise. She knew he wouldn’t want her anymore. She would forget about him and never see him again.

 

For one year, the soldier wrote many letters—but she wouldn’t answer. He phoned her many times but she wouldn’t return her calls. But after one year, the mother walked into her room and announced, “He’s back from the war.”

 

The girl shouted, “No! Please don’t tell him about me. Don’t tell him I’m here!”

The mother said, “He’s getting married,” and handed her a wedding invitation.

The girl’s heart sank. She knew she still loved him—but she had to forget him now.

With great sadness, she opened the wedding invitation.

And then she saw her name on it!

Confused, she asked, “What is this?”

 

That was when the young man entered her room with a bouquet of flowers. He knelt beside her and asked, “Will you marry me?”

 

The girl covered her face with her hands and said, “I’m ugly!”

 

The man said, “Without your permission, your mother sent me your photos. When I saw your photos, I realized that nothing has changed. You’re still the person I fell in love. You’re still as beautiful as ever. Because I love you!”

A Couple's Heart-break

A boy was born to a couple after eleven years of marriage. They were a loving couple and the boy was the apple of their eyes.

 

One morning, when the boy was around two years old, the husband saw a medicine bottle open. He was late for work so he asked the wife to cap the bottle and put it in the cupboard. The mother, preoccupied in the kitchen, totally forgot the matter.

 

The boy saw the bottle and playfully went to it and, fascinated with its color, drank it all. It happened to be a poisonous medicine meant for adults in small dosages.

 

When the child collapsed, the mother hurried him to the hospital, where he died. The mother was stunned; she was terrified. How would she face her husband?

 

When the distraught father came to the hospital and saw the dead child, he looked at his wife and uttered just four words.

 

“I Love You Darling.”

 

The husband’s totally unexpected reaction is proactive behavior. The child is dead. He can never be brought back to life. There is no point in finding fault with the mother. Besides, if only he have taken time to put the bottle away, this would not have happened.

 

No point in attaching blame. She had also lost her only child. What she needed at that moment was consolation and sympathy from the husband. That is what he gave her.

 

Sometimes we spend time asking who is responsible or who’s to blame, whether in a relationship, in a job or with the people we know and miss out on the warmth in human relationships we could receive by giving each other support.

 

After all, shouldn’t forgiving someone we love be the easiest thing in the world to do?

Treasure what you have. Don’t multiply pain, anguish and suffering by holding onto forgiveness. Let go of all your envies, jealousies, unwillingness to forgive, selfishness, and fears and you will find things are actually not as difficult as you think.

 

If everyone could look at life with this kind of perspective, there would be fewer problems in the world.