Once an unhappy young man came to an old pious man, told him he was very sad and asked for a solution. The pious man instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. ‘How does it taste?’ the pious man asked. ‘Awful,’ spat the young man.
The pious man chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the young man swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the pious man said, ‘Now drink from the lake.’ As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the pious man asked, ‘How does it taste?’ ‘Good!’ remarked the young man. ‘Do you taste the salt?’ asked the pious man. ‘No,’ replied the young man.
The pious man sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, ‘The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste of the pain depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.’
Moral of the story: When you have pain in life:
- If you put it in front of Allah Ta’ala then the pain will be very little.
- But if you put in front anyone other than Him it becomes very large.
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