Anonymous, 19.11.04
One night there was a woman at the airport who had to wait
for several hours before catching her next flight. While she
waited she bought a book and a pack of biscuits to spend the
time. She looked for a place to sit and waited.
She was deep into her book, when suddenly she realised that
there was a young man sitting next to her who was stretching his
hand, with no concern whatsoever, and grabbing the pack of
cookies lying between them.
He started to eat them one by one. Not wanting to make a fuss
about it she decided to ignore him. The woman, slightly
bothered, ate the cookies and watched the clock, while the young
and shameless thief of biscuits was also finishing them. The
woman started to get really angry at this point and thought, "If
I wasn't such a good and educated person, I would have given
this daring man a black eye by now."
Every time she ate a biscuit, he had one too. The dialogue
between their eyes continued and when only one biscuit was left,
she wondered what was he going to do. Softly and with a nervous
smile, the young man grabbed the last biscuit and broke it in
two. He offered one half to the woman while he ate the other
half.
Briskly she took the biscuit and thought, "What an insolent man!
How uneducated! He didn't even thank me!" She had never met
anybody so inconsiderate and sighed relieved to hear her flight
announced. She grabbed her bags and went towards the boarding
gate refusing to look back to where that insolent thief was
seated.
After boarding the plane and nicely seated, she looked for her
book which was nearly finished by now. While looking into her
bag she was totally surprised to find her pack of biscuits
nearly intact. If my biscuits are here, she thought feeling
terribly, those others were his and he tried to share them with
me. Too late to apologise to the young man, she realised with
pain, that it was her who had been insolent, uneducated and a
thief, and not him.
How many times in our lives, had we known with certainty that
something happened in a certain way, only to discover later that
it wasn't true? How many times has our lack of trust within us
made us judge other people unfairly with our conceited ideas,
often far away from reality.
That is why we have to think twice before we judge others. Let's
always give others the benefit of the doubt before we think
badly of them and instead lets concentrate on correcting our own
bad points.