AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Perched on my little balcony and looking at the infinite night sky, my mind wandered. I thought how small we are; probably a dot in the entire universe. But what perplexed me was the way our mental plane of existence behaves, forgetting the fact that we are a funny little living dot in this eternity. 

What saddens me is how we retaliate angrily at each and every little trigger that someone around us offer. Our mind, these days, is programmed to pounce back at anyone who does harm to us. And ridiculously, we want the same magnitude of harm to be offered back, be it in words or in action. 

Why have we lost the tender act of forgiveness? Why do we always retaliate in the same way as others do to us? Why do we always want to hurt a person who knowingly or unknowingly may have hurt us emotionally? 

Gandhiji once pointed that retaliation doesn't demand courage but it’s the act of forgiveness that demands courage. When we forgive the people that have hurt us, our hatred towards them decreases and love for them increases. When we forgive them again and again, our love towards them reaches a point that it can never be defeated by an action or word from them that will hurt or harm us in future. Thereafter the whole idea of revenge will cease to exist and will die a natural death! 

My mind resonated by the fact that how great a soul he was and how blessed we are to be from a land where this great man walked in flesh and blood. 

Just then a gust of cold night breeze hit my face, as if it agreed in response to what I thought. The infinite night sky beckoned, showing me how silly we were to always retaliate with ‘an eye for an eye, never realizing that one day it can make the whole world blind.’ I realized that nature was a great teacher; to behold the star studded night sky and then learn a lesson from it!