Anger or an outburst is an emotion which invariably leads to antipathetic results

Aeons ago lived a sagacious teacher who adopted unusual techniques as part of his pedagogy while imparting knowledge to his students. One day he provided his students with an empty jar and a bagful of pebbles.

He directed them to fill the jar with as many pebbles as they could. The students fretted as they struggled to insert the pebbles in the jar, but eventually managed to insert them.

Subsequently, the teacher gave them a bag of sand and guided them to pour it into the jar. The sand filled in all the gaps between the rocks. Eventually, the teacher gave them a pitcher of water and asked the students to pour it into the jar which filled in all the remaining gaps. It was then pronounced that the jar represented our lives and the pebbles, sand and water typified what we live with.

 The teacher went on to State, “If we fill our lives with anger (represented by the pebbles), there will not be any room for anything else. But if we focus on the important things (represented by the sand and water), we could discover a State of happiness and balance.”

Among the students lived a boy who was disposed with a foul temper. He would get angry at every little issue. One day, the sagacious teacher gave him a bag of nails and told him, “Every time you get vexed, hammer a nail into that front wall.” And thus began the activity. On the first day, the boy hammered 50 nails. The following day, he hammered 40. Each time he went up to the wall, he repented being piqued.

It was quite a challenge to hammer a nail into the bricks of the wall! Slowly, the stripling discovered that controlling his rage was easier than hammering countless nails into the wall. The strapping youth had already become a laughing stock of his batchmates performing this wasteful exercise. Over a period, the number of nails hammered began to diminish much to the amazement of the student and his friends.

Eventually, came a day when he was not cross and became joyous about the fact. The perspicacious teacher assigned the student yet another task, “If you do not get provoked the entire day, remove one nail from the wall.” After many days, eyebrows were raised as all the nails were extricated from the wall.

Finally, the teacher took the student near the wall and asked him what he saw. The student replied that he could view holes in the wall. “These holes are like the scars that one leave’s on individuals when a person gets exasperated. No matter how many times you apologise, the scar does not vanish.”

“Thus, I suggest you to do two things; realise that words once uttered linger on. Your irascibility hurts others and leaves a dampener on all.” He continued, “Each time you feel outraged, ‘hammer a nail’ in the wall. The simplest thing you can do is to carry a pocket diary and draw a line each time you get annoyed. At night, count the number of lines drawn for that day. If you make this a habit, each time you would become waspish, you would be reminded to note it down.”

“Once you follow this regimen, your awareness and memory muscle about the damage you were inflicting among the people with whom you interact would increase.” The student had learned his lesson, through this ingenious teaching imparted by his teacher.

(The writer is the CEO of Chhattisgarh East Railway Ltd.and Chhattisgarh East West Railway Ltd. He is a faculty of the Art of Living; views are personal)