You will never be alone if you love!

There is a time for everything – to love, to give, to care, etc and a time to feel lonely, sick, desolate, etc also. If we carefully evaluate our day, we will know this is true. Then what make a happy man and a sad one?

Can you feel happy that you felt alone and sad as much as you felt wanted and loved? Someone told me that you have to be a philosopher to feel so. I do not know anything about philosophy. Therefore, I can not evaluate. However, there is something I can share in the form of a story:

A great king once felt extraordinarily lonely and desolate. He had a dozen doting queens, two dozen loving children, adoring citizens and a bunch of loyal ministers. Yet one day, he felt lonely and desolate.

As is customary, he called for the wisest among his ministers and confided in him how he felt. The minister thought long and hard about this and said:

O king, you are lonely because there is something that you are yet to achieve but can not figure out what. Otherwise, look at you. No man can ever boast of what you have.

The king was silent for sometime. Then he asked the minister to arrange the trial of one of the most notorious criminals in custody. The case was quite a complicated one and the cruelty supposedly exhibited by the criminal had shocked everyone’s conscience.

The minister thought the King wanted to meet out some extra-ordinary punishment and thereby jolt his lonely heart out of desolation.

So the trial commenced. As it concluded and time came for the King’s judgment, a strange silence fell on the crowd. The criminal in any case knew that he would be a dead man and so stood quietly awaiting the sentence. The king was in deep contemplation. At the end, the king said:

Bring forth the victim’s family. So they came forward.

Swear to me that by this man’s blood your child will come back to life.

The family stood puzzled and told him that it can never be. Their child was dead.

Then, swear to me that your child’s soul will rejoice when this man’s blood is spilt.

The family was not sure. No one had seen a dead soul rejoicing.

If this man’s blood is of no use to you then, why do you want him dead?

The family did not know what to say.

The king then asked the criminal:

If by your death you can not bring the child back, how then do you want to pay them back?

The criminal looked at the mother of the child and said:

I do not know. I have sinned and would like to pay them back by my labor, my king. I can not bring their child back. But I can work their field and season after season; can give them a good harvest.

So be it, then. Free this man so that he is a slave to the family to work on their land. As for the grieving mother, learn to forgive the sin this man committed. May be you will find the smile of your child in every harvest this man brings to your home!

After the trial, the minister was puzzled and asked his king how the trial helped him overcome his loneliness. The king said:

Compassion, my dear minister, is the antidote for loneliness!