October 5, 2008

The Old Man and His Shoe

One day an old man
boarded a bus. As he was going up the steps, one of his shoes slipped
off. The door closed and the bus moved off so he was unable to
retrieve it. The old man calmly took off his other shoe and threw it
out of the window.

A young man on the bus
saw what happened, and could not help going up to the old man and
asking, "I noticed what you did, sir. Why did you throw out your other
shoe?"

The old man promptly
replied, "So that whoever finds them will be able to use
them."

The old man in the story
understood a fundamental philosophy for life - do not hold on to
something simply for the sake of possessing it or because you do not
wish others to have it.

We lose things all the
time. The loss may seem to us grievous and unjust initially, but loss
only happens so that positive changes can occur in our lives. We
should not always assume that losing something is bad, because if
things do not shift, we'll never become better people or experience
better things. That's not to say of course that we only lose "bad"
things; it simply means that in order for us to mature emotionally and
spiritually, and for us to contribute to the world, the interchange
between loss and gain is necessary.

Like the old man in the
story, we have to learn to let go. The world had decided that it was
time for the old man to lose his shoe. Maybe this happened to add
momentum to a series of events leading to a better pair of shoes for
the old man. Maybe the search for another pair of shoes would lead the
old man to a great benefactor. Maybe the world decided that someone
else needed the shoes more.

Whatever the reason, we
can't avoid losing things. The old man understood this. One of his
shoes had gone out of his reach. The remaining shoe would not have
been much help to him, but it would be a cherished gift to a homeless
person desperately in need of protection from the
ground.

Hoarding possessions
does nothing to make us or the world better. We all have to decide
constantly if some things or people have run their course in our lives
or would be better off with others. We then have to muster the courage
to give them away.

Source from :
Ivalice-Forum

if everyone thinks like that. the world would be at peace

.weiming
shouted at 22:39