I remind myself of a story I once came across some time ago.
It goes something like this:
:-) :-) :-)
Two best friends who have grown up since the time when they were little kids – one is now the King and another is an average peasant guy.
The peasant has a magnificent way of looking at life. The King’s best friend would always call anything as ‘Good’. Anything at all that happens, the peasant would exclaim, “This is good!”
The peasant – the King’s best friend – always looks at things from a perspective that something good is coming out of anything that is happening.
One day, the King and the peasant went out on a hunting trip deep in the woods. The King aimed his rifle and it backfired, and blew the King’s thumb off. His best friend the peasant looked at that and exclaimed “Don’t worry about that, this is good! This is good that your thumb got blown off”.
The King, who was on excruciating pain retorted, “What do you mean this is good, this isn’t good at all!”
The King was so upset and infuriated with his best friend’s reaction to his misfortune, that he threw his best friend into the dungeon, and have the peasant chained to the wall.
The King just left the peasant there.
A year went by and the King went out with his men on a hunting trip. The King got separated from his men and went deeper and deeper into the woods until he was captured by a group of cannibals. The cannibals strapped the King onto a post, piled woods underneath him and was about to light up fire to cook him and eat him, when suddenly they noticed that the King is missing a thumb.
These cannibals happened to be a superstitious group. They believed that it was unhealthy to eat a body that isn’t whole.
So the cannibals got afraid and set the King lose. The King went back to his men. As the King narrated his story to his men, when it suddenly dawned upon him what his best friend had said to him a year ago about him losing his thumb – that it was good that he lost his thumb.
The King, feeling ashamed of himself and of what he had done to his best friend, went down to the dungeon himself to set his best friend free. He rushed down the steep, dark stairways to finally meet his the peasant who was chained on the wall. And the King apologized profusely and sought for his best friend’s forgiveness.
The King shared with his best friend, his encounter with the cannibals and what had happened.
“And you said it was good (that I lost my thumb), which is so true. How could I have been so stupid! I am so, so sorry dear friend. Please forgive me.”
And the King’s best friend, who had been imprisoned unjustly all this while, said to the King,
“Don’t worry, it was good. It’s good that I have been down here since the past year.”
And the King exclaimed, “How can it be good, that you were down here for a year? I am SO sorry that I did this to YOU!”
The peasant replied, “No, really, it’s good. Because if I wasn’t down here, I would have been up there with you (on that hunting trip and got eaten by the cannibals instead)!
:-) :-) :-)
So that's the story :-) There is always something good in every situation, even when we do not have the wisdom to comprehend it until perhaps many, many years later!
As long as we keep on reminding each other to keep looking for something good in every situation, learning is always an on-going process - towards becoming better and better :-) (Which is also the reason why we need to choose who we are mingling with, carefully - reminding myself again) ;-)
