The Feathers

Once upon a time, a farmer spoke very rude and harsh words to his neighbor. Later on, he realized his mistake of not being nice to his neighbor and so he went to a saint in his village. He asked the saint for his advice and wisdom on how can he take his cruel words back as he had insulted his neighbor and was regretting his own behavior. The saint asked the farmer to collect a lot of feathers and put them in middle of the village. The middle of village was a busy area with shops and lots of traffic. The farmer followed the saint’s instruction and put the feathers there in the busy street and came back to the saint. “Now go and collect all the feathers back.” said the saint. The eager farmer went back to collect all the feathers but all of them were dispersed in all different directions and some also went in nearby river and drifted away. The tired farmer came back to the saint empty handed without any feathers. The saint told the farmer, “This is exactly what happens with your spoken words. You can easily speak from your mouth all the words you want to speak, but you can never take them back no matter how much you want to. When you speak bitter words you do it to hurt others but when we hurt others we also feel bad about it the next day and regret it and then we hurt ourselves too. Then we go and apologize to the other person for our misconduct. So instead of that we must be very careful what we speak and how we speak with other people around us.”

Wisdom, Life lesson and Rules- Silence is golden. especially when we are angry let the time pass and once we are cooled down, we can think rationally and speak kindly and use the words more effectively. Do not react immediately when angry.

Credits- Brahma Kumaris Organization