10 Wild Dogs

A Story.

The late king of my community had ten wild dogs. He used them to torture and eat any of his servants who made a mistake. One of the servants gave an opinion which was wrong, and the king didn’t like it at all. So he ordered that the servant be thrown to the dogs.

The servant said, “I served you for ten years, and you do this to me? Please give me ten days before throwing me to those dogs!”

The king agreed.

In those ten days, the servant went to the guard who looks after the dogs and told him he would like to serve the dogs for the next ten days. The guard was baffled but agreed, and the servant started feeding the dogs, cleaning for them, bathing them, and providing all sorts of comfort for them.

When the ten days were over, the king ordered that the servant be thrown to the dogs for his punishment. When he was thrown in, we were all amazed to see the ravenous dogs only licking the feet of the servant!

The king, baffled at what he was seeing, said,

      "What has happened to my dogs?”

The servant replied, "I served the dogs for only ten days, and they didn’t forget my service. Yet I served you for a whole ten years and you forgot all, at my first mistake!"

The king realised his mistake and ordered the servant to be set free.

 

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Are you indispensable?

There Is No Indispensable Man
by Saxon N. White Kessinger. 

Sometime when you’re feeling important;
Sometime when your ego’s in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you’ll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There’s no indispensable man.

Damaging Yourself: Anger

On the Halloween when Dwight D. Eisenhower was ten years old, his parents let his two older brothers go trick-or-treating, but told Ike he was too young to accompany them. Having eagerly anticipated a night of fun and freedom, Dwight was crushed. He argued his case for why he should be allowed to go out, begging and pleading with his parents to change their minds until his brothers at last headed off into the night without him.

 

Completely beside himself with rage, Ike went into the yard and starting pounding away at the trunk of an apple tree, pummeling the bark until his fists bled. His father finally pulled the boy away, gave him a few swats with a hickory stick, and sent him off to bed.

Ike sobbed into his pillow, feeling like the whole world was against him.

After an hour, Eisenhower’s mother came into his room and sat down in the rocking chair beside his bed. She rocked silently for awhile, and then began to talk to young Dwight, telling him she was concerned about his anger, and that of all her boys, he had the most to learn about getting his temper under control. But striving to do so and gaining self-mastery, Mrs. Eisenhower continued, “He that conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city,” she told her son, paraphrasing the Bible. Then, Ike remembered, she offered him a piece of life-changing advice:

“Hating was a futile sort of thing, she said, because hating anyone or anything meant that there was little to be gained. The person who had incurred my displeasure probably didn’t care, possibly didn’t even know, and the only person injured was myself.”

As Eisenhower’s mother applied salve and bandages to Ike’s wounded hands, she reinforced her point by noting the way in which his heedless anger and resentment had changed nothing and only damaged himself.

Article: The Art of Manliness, June 3, 2012