THE VOICE WITHIN

T wo friends were walking through the desert. At one point, they had an argument and one friend slapped the other in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything he wrote in the sand, “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to have a wash. The one who had been slapped got stuck in a mire and started drowning, but his friend saved him. After he had recovered from his shock, he inscribed on a slab of stone, “Today my best friend saved my life.”

The friend who slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you inscribe in stone, why?”

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

Those who know about such things are divided about what we remember better — the good that happened to us or the bad. Some say bad memories stick harder, particularly the details that caused strong emotions like fear, anger and hate.

Others say our brains are so built that good memories are stored upfront from where they can be easily retrieved. This could be because such memories trigger a ‘reward’ mechanism. On the other hand, bad memories are broken into fragments and compartmentalized in slots difficult to access.

Be as it may, life becomes much tolerable and better if we cultivate the proverbial wisdom of swans. It is said they drink only the milk and leave out the water!

— the harbinger