
16:57 | 23.07.05
Just thought of putting this article that got sent in my mail the other day.
Old Man & 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.