28.12.2008 Midnight - The Stories

The sand & Stones story

There is a story of two friends who were walking through a desert. At a certain point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one right across the face. The one who got slapped was very hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "Today my closest friend slapped me."

The two friends kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to go into the water. The one, who had been slapped, got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but his friend saved him. After the friend recovered from near drowning, he carved out on a stone: "Today my closest friend saved my life."

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?"

The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."

"Always give without remembering and always receive without forgetting."

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The story of the lake

The Master instructed the unhappy student to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. 'How does it taste?' the Master asked.

'Awful,' said the student.

The Master then asked the student to take another handful of salt and throw it in the lake. The two walked to the nearby lake and when the student swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, 'Now drink from
the lake.'

The student did so and the Master asked, 'How does it taste?'

'Good!' remarked the student.

'Do you taste the salt?' asked the Master.

No, said the young man.

The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, 'The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the 'pain' depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things..... Stop being a glass. Become a lake!'

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What Letting Go Really Means...

To "let go" does not mean to stop caring. It means I can't do it for someone else.

To "let go" is not to cut myself off. It's the realization that I can't control another.

To "let go" is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands, but in God's.

To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another. It's to make the most possible out of myself.

To "let go" is not to care for, but care about.

To "let go" is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To "let go" is not to deny, but to accept.

To "let go" is not to nag, scold, fuss, or argue; but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To "let go" is not to regret the past, but to live for today and grow for the future.

To "let go" is to fear less and to love more.


This is to remind you and myself that each one of us has things in our life beyond our control – and often the healthy thing is to let go... in the proper way.


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