Change yourself, not the world!

Long ago, people happily lived under the rule of a king. The people of the kingdom were very happy as they had a very prosperous life with abundance of wealth and no misfortunes. One day, the king decided to travel and visit places of historical importance and pilgrim centres. He decided to travel by foot to interact with his citizens and accompany them. People of distant places were happy to have a conversation with their king.

After several weeks, he returned to the palace. He was quite happy that he visited many pilgrim centres and could see his fellow people leading a propitious life. However, he had one regret. He had intolerable pain in his feet as it was his first trip by foot. He complained to his ministers that the roads weren’t comfortable and were very stony. He could not tolerate the pain as he walked all the way through the rough path.

The king said he was very much worried about the people who walked along those roads as it would have been painful for them too! Thus he made an order to cover the roads of the whole country with leather so that people might feel comfortable, immediately.

His ministers were stunned to hear his order as it would require thousands of cows to get the sufficient quantity of leather and it would cost a huge amount of money too. A wise man from the ministry came to the king and said that he had another idea. ‘Why do you want to kill the holy animal cow to cover the road with leather? Rather, you can just have a piece of leather cut in appropriate shape to cover your feet’

The king was surprised by his suggestion and applauded the minister. He ordered for a pair of leather shoes for him and requested the countrymen too to wear shoes. Many of us criticise the world for many things. We curse and blame the things in our surroundings and never understand that we need a change in us. Changes are inevitable in the world, and the changes should be from us. We cannot or should not force others to make a change.