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 realized 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 fresh 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 apologize to the young man, she realized 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.