By MW Kaye
On the tender branch of a rosebush a beautiful rose was blooming. A passerby person plucked the flower unthinkingly. As a result, the thorns on the branch pricked his fingers and they began to bleed. Now, if this man starts to blame the thorns for his wounds, do you think it would be right? Every intelligent person knows that in such a situation, complaining about the thorns would be silly. This is because in line with the principles on which the system of the world has been structured, here, along with roses, there will necessarily also be thorns. Thst is why one must not engage in the useless effort of trying to eliminate all the thorns on a rosebush. Rather, one should eliminate one’s own lack of understanding and foolishness and develop the ability to save oneself from being pricked by thorns while trying to access a rose.
The same is the case with human life, too. The system of human life has been made by God. And God, in line with the purposes He has for this world and our lives, has placed ‘roses’ here as well as ‘thorns’. Here, there is good and bad. The Lord has given human beings freewill, and so, sometimes, they may do good, and sometimes they may do bad. Sometimes, they may behave like ‘roses’, but at other times they may behave like ‘thorns’. This being the case, how should one handle the ‘thorns’, in the form of troubles and hardships from other people, that one may meet with while undergoing this journey of life?
The solution is patience and turning aside or avoidance. That is to say, one should walk very cautiously, avoiding, as far as possible, the human ‘thorns’ that one might encounter, and if by chance gets ‘pricked’ by such a ‘thorn’, one should adopt the method of patience and forbearance, and not the method of opposition, confrontation and conflict.
It is rightly said: “The dogs keep barking, and the elephant keeps walking.” If a dog barks at fellow dogs, the other dogs will also begin to bark and may even come racing to bite it. But if a dog barks at an elephant, the elephant does not begin to bark back at the dog, and nor does it rush towards it in order to fight or retaliate. It simply ignores it and moves ahead, knowing that it has an important journey to traverse and that, therefore, it should not let the barking of the dog cause it to deviate from its purpose.