A man told his grandson: "A
terrible fight is going on inside me -- a fight between two wolves. One is evil,
and represents hate, anger, arrogance, intolerance, and superiority . The other
is good, and represents joy, peace, love, tolerance, understanding, humility,
kindness, empathy, generosity, and compassion. This same fight is going on
inside you, inside every other person too."
The grandson then asked: "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply: "The
one you feed." - Anon.
Why can’t we all just get along well? In today’s world tolerance and violence
are seen as two very prominent terms that have extremely strong impact on our
individual as well as collective lives. In the society like one we are living
in, people are so extremist that they can’t even stand difference of opinion. It
seems like they are always looking for reasons for the outbreak of their
outrage.
Don’t you dare raise your voice against the unfullfilment of your basic rights
or stand up for your beliefs or even say anything about one’s favourite
politician… else who knows you might be the next on their bloody hit-list. And
in case you are unlucky enough to be a religious minority in an Islamic Republic
then the situation will become even worse.
What causes this fury and wrath
is simply the lack of tolerance. Tolerance is the ability to respect and
recognize the differences, beliefs and practices of others without any
discrimination. When it comes to individual differences, intolerance or lack of
endurance give rise to aggression and offensiveness among the individuals and
the same happens when it comes to the society. We witness intolerance and
impatience among these irritated, frustrated and annoyed people in their petty
life issues. We often suppress the inner voice of our heart and concentrate only
on the wrath, bitterness and anger uttered by people. They or sometimes we, put
tolerance and kindness aside and deal our everyday matters with violence, hate
and impatience. We are so frustrated and self obsessed that our lives revolve
around only our own selves and then we find means to put this frustration out by
one way or the other.
Today, we the human beings are worst than animals. Our minds are preoccupied by
the beliefs and teachings of our religion. However, we forget that no religion
in this world ignore tolerance and promotes violence. I have seen so much
hostility among people around the globe simply because of different ideologies
and beliefs.
As we all strive to live a good healthy life, our understanding of good life
deepens through this very striving. What makes a life good is an ongoing project
that lasts throughout our life span. We are involved in all sorts of activities
which can make our lives meaningful and worthwhile. The human body is God’s
masterpiece. God has created and left us drowning in this sea of life. But he
has also shown us the path to rescue. Now it is up to us…either we want to reach
this seashore of life or we want to drown in the sea.
In short, tolerance is the opposite of violence. It involves viewing every
single being involved in this vast project of understanding what makes a life
good. But we often ignore the very fact that in this project we all are
connected very deeply.
The famous quote is:
“Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.”