Story No 2

Story no.2

Irrational Belief:

When people behave badly or unfairly, they should be blamed, reprimanded and punished; they are bad or rotten individuals.

Rational Belief:

Certain acts are inappropriate or antisocial, and those who perform them are behaving stupidly or neurotically, and would be better helped to change.

       

 Once upon a time long long ago in the Kingdom of Beliefs lived Prince Garv. The king and queen were very proud of their son’s skills but they were very upset with his behavior. He would mostly be very rude with the maids and would speak very severely if they committed any mistakes.

Once Prince Garv was playing with one of his servants, he was balling and the servant batting. Garv bowled the servant & with a lot of anger the servant threw the bat on ground & it broke. Prince Garv got very angry and called names to the servant & punished him to stand in the Sun for rest of the day. King didn’t approve of this behavior and tried to reason with him but with no success.

This and many such instances would keep happening wherein Prince Garv would blame people or punish the servants or would condemn them. And the King’s worries grew day by day.

Once in Summer King’s best friend Angel Parivartan returned from a year long trip to China. Angel Parivartan had got beautiful gold plated tea set from China for the King. The King ordered his tea to be served in the same tea set every day. King and Angel Parivartan would chat for hours together during tea time, sitting in the garden. And Prince Garv would get engrossed listening to the stories which Angel Parivartan had brought back from China, so he would also join them for tea.

Some days later the King noticed that the milk kettle from the tea set is missing so he casually asked the maid why she had got another kettle out? To which she vaguely replied that she couldn’t find the set properly, but her body language was sending some other message and Angel Parivartan could guess that she had actually stolen it.

The King till then had ordered his staff to search the kettle and they found out that the same maid had stolen it. When The King and party got to know Prince Garv became furious and he started calling names and asked his father to severely punish her but Angel Parivartan intervened and requested The King to forgive her and rather kindly asked her why she had done such an act?

At the kindness shown by the angel the maid admitted her mistake and said she had become greedy due to the beauty of the pot and had stolen it on the spur of the impulse and she deeply regretted doing so. She was extremely sorry for her inappropriate behavior and promised not to repeat such a thing ever.

The King forgave her but the Prince couldn’t understand so Angel Parivartan explained “ see she did commit a mistake but that doesn’t make her a completely bad person. She is still serving your family with complete dedication so she definitely has more to her than her mistake. Yes I do agree that she behaved inappropriately but there are different ways to handle such things, if we only punish her we haven’t helped her in any way. Rather we have added to another irrational feeling of bitterness in her, and have increased chances of further inappropriateness in her.

The Prince could actually see the difference here as whenever he had punished people they hadn’t changed for good but now the kindness and support did bring about repentance in the lady.

        So just to be sure of his understanding he asked Angel Parivartan “ so do you mean we should never punish people ?” To which Angel said “see beta Certain acts are inappropriate or antisocial, and those who perform them are behaving stupidly or neurotically, and would be better helped to change rather than condemning them.”

        Since this incidence Prince Garv had changed his perspective and though at people’s mistakes he still felt annoyed, he tried to see the individual apart from his actions and this change reduced the King’s worries and everyone lived happily ever after.