There are times in life when you feel you shouldnt have said what you just said. This is not one of them :). Anyways, jokes apart.. when we learn lessons the hard way we never forget them and this is precisely one of them.
Just a small story (which many of us would have read in Do-it-YOURSELF-SELF-development books) before I make my point, which was told to me in my personality development course. Here it is.
Just a small story (which many of us would have read in Do-it-YOURSELF-SELF-development books) before I make my point, which was told to me in my personality development course. Here it is.
There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the! young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there."
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the! young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there."
A Thirukural (couplet 129) by Thiruvalluvar summarises the above story:
which means that "The wound caused by fire will heal within, but not the scar left by the tongue".
The story or the saying did'nt hold much significance to me until the day I really messed up things for myself with the wrong use of words. Just a slip of the tongue, a moment when you see red and speak your mind or a wrong word at the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong person is sufficient to make the rest of your life miserable.
Anger makes you a handicap. When you angry, you are blind, deaf, stupid and an unfeeling monster but you are unfortunately not dumb or mute. The overwhelming urge to lash out at your opponent (thats how you see anybody standing in front of you) is often uncontrollable and if you don't hold yourself back in time, the consequences can be really drastic. It could be anything from finding yourself a new member of the on-the-street-with-no-food-or-no-money-or-no-nothing club to finding yourself without a relation (friend , brother, sister, husband, wife or any relationship for that matter).
Well, the worst part is yet to come. Nothing is as difficult as convincing your "opponent" that you didnt mean what you just said. Its very easy to say sorry. Its after all another word. But you just cant take back what you said. Its out there and it remains there and you are forever thinking "If only I hadnt said that.. things would have been different". And, in the silence after the storm, you are left alone thinking if that one moment of glee or satisfaction that you got by using hurtful words is worth a lifetime of regret.
As an after thought, things would have definitely been different and better if you had just kept quite. Things would have been resolved in a different way, relationships could have been saved and life would feel much much better. But it all depends on our actions at that one moment.
Ultimately, the result of any situation is our hands. It depends on how we perceive things and how we reciprocate. After all, we always have a choice. Its just that we got to choose right !! :)
