A car was honking behind me, “Let him pass!” I told my driver, and my driver quite reluctantly gave way. I smiled as I remembered a story about a doctor who was called one evening for an urgent surgery for a little boy. He answered the call, changed his clothes, reached the hospital in minutes and went directly to the surgery block. He found the boy’s father waiting in the hall for the doctor. On seeing him, the dad yelled: “Why did you take all this time to come? Don’t you know that my son’s life is in danger? Don’t you have any sense of responsibility?”
The doctor smiled and said: “I am sorry, I wish you’d calm down so that I can do my work” “Calm down? What if your son was in this room right now, would you calm down? If your own son dies now what will you do?” asked the father angrily. The doctor smiled again and replied: “I will say what “Job” said in the Holy Bible: “From dust we came and to dust we return, blessed be the name of God”.
“Giving advice, when we’re not concerned, is so easy,” murmured the father. The surgery took some hours after which the doctor came out and said, “Thank goodness!, your son is saved!” And without waiting for the father’s reply he carried on his way running and said, “If you have any question, ask the nurse!!”
“Why is he so arrogant? He couldn’t wait some minutes so I could ask about my son’s condition?” commented the father when seeing the nurse minutes after the doctor left. The nurse answered, tears coming down her face: “His son died yesterday in a road accident, he was at the funeral when we called him for your son’s surgery. And now that he saved your son’s life, he left running to finish his son’s burial!”
How often we’ve seen a car trying to overtake us, or somebody trying to push his way ahead, and we’ve blocked his way, or muttered how arrogant and uncivil the person is. Have you ever wondered whether you’ve been harsh in your judgement?
Have we judged our spouse wrong, when she was not attentive to our conversation, when she could have been mulling over your child’s poor results, or whether you would be happy with the dinner which hasn’t come out as well as she would have liked it to have come out? Like that father of the child in the story, let us not judge too harshly, there is always a reason someone behaves the way he or she is behaving, so don’t judge, without knowing..
—Email: bobsbanter@gmail.com
