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 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."
