Recipe for Happiness

I named this story "Recipe for Happiness" for a good reason. A friend sent it to me by email right when I needed it. At work I have one co-worker who seems to be angry all the time. What problems she has, she snaps at other people. And now she had been particularly nasty towards me. She also needed to find a recipe for happiness...

I was so hurt by this, and was was almost swallowing tears, when a new message arrived on my email. It is the following story, which you have read before, I am sure. Still, it is so good, I want to include it here on my site. It is based on an old Arab proverb (which is at the end of the story).

Two friends were walking through the desert. At some point of the journey they had an argument,
and one friend slapped the other in the face.

The one who got slapped, was hurt, said nothing, and wrote in the sand:

"Today my best friend slapped me in the face."

They kept on walking until they found an oasis and decided to take a bath. The one who got slapped in the face got into trouble and almost drowned,
but his friend saved him.

After he recovered, he took a chisel and with it wrote on stone:

"Today my best friend saved my life".

The friend who had first slapped him and then saved his life, asked:

"When I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now you write on stone. Why?"

The other friend replied:

"When someone hurts us, we should write about it in the sand so that winds of forgiveness can blow it away. But when someone does something good for us, we should engrave it into stone so that no wind can erase it.

And what did my co-worker say to me? You can read the words in the wind because I chose not to write the words on stone.

“Insults should be written in sand, compliments should be carved in stone”

- Arab proverb

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