REFLECTIONS ON LIFE

Do you know someone who has a bad temper? Perhaps you have a bad temper that you wish you didn't have. Can you imagine the damage such a temper can do to you and others?  There once was a little boy who had a very bad temper. One day, bothered by his fits of temper, his father decided to hand him a bag of nails and said that every time the boy lost his temper, he had to hammer a nail into the back fence. On the first day, the boy had driven  37 nails  into that fence. The boy gradually began to  control his temper  over the next few weeks, and the number of nails he was hammering into the fence slowly  dwindled down . He discovered it was easier to control his temper than to hammer those nails into the fence. Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father the news and his accomplishment so the father suggested that the boy should now pull out a nail every day he kept his temper under control. ...

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after  having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco. "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've got a favour to ask.  I have a friend I'd like to bring with me." "Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him." "There's something you should know" The son continued,  "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped  on a land mined and lost an arm and a leg. He has  nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us." "I'm sorry to hear that, son.  Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live." The mother said "No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us." "Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking.  Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us.  We have our own lives to live, and we can't let somethin...

An old man sits with his grown up son on a bench outside their house. The day is sunny and clear. The son is reading a newspaper, and ignoring his father. The father looks emptily into the bright garden before him. Then, a sparrow flies into a nearby bush. "What's that?" asks the old man instinctively. "A sparrow" replies the young man nonchalantly, without looking up. The old man justs sits quietly. Then, the sparrow flies up into the tree under which they are sitting. The old man looks up, and asks the son again, "What's that?" “A sparrow!” the young man says a little louder, looking a bit annoyed now. The old man continues to sit quietly as before. Then, the sparrow flies onto the green grass before them, happily pecking at seeds and bugs on the ground. “What’s that?” asks the father a third time. This annoys the young man greatly. He puts down his papers, looks at his father really upset, and shouts: “It’s a sparrow, ...

One day a very wealthy father took his son on a trip to the country for the sole purpose of showing his son how it was to be poor. They spent a few days and nights on the farm what would be considered a very poor family. After they return from the trip, the father asked his son how he liked the trip. "It was great, Dad" the son replied. "Did you see how poor people can be?" The father asked. "Oh yeah" said the son. "So what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father. The son answered, "I saw that we have one dog and they had four, we have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end" And he added: "We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon" Before his father could say anything, he continued: "We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond o...