Love: some musings

Love is unconditional

If your other half asks you:"Why do you love me?", and you immediately give your reasons, what happens when those reasons disappear? Do you stop loving the person?

98 Bricks

This is a short adaptation of a story by Ajahm Brahm.

Many years ago, when building a monastery, Ajahm Brahm was a young monk trying to lay the bricks for a wall. It was surprisingly difficult to lay a brick straight. If you hit a brick on one end, the other end would pop up. If you tried balancing it by hitting the other end, the other end would pop up. It was more difficult than he thought. He decided to put in a lot of effort and took a lot of care to ensure that the wall he was building was a level wall. After laying 100 bricks, the wall was finished.

Alas, he noticed that in the midst of laying the bricks, there were 2 bricks in the middle of the wall that he had missed levelling. They stuck out like a sore thumb. He was horrified, but he could not do anything as the mortar had already set. He wanted to rebuild the wall, but when he told the abbot, the abbot told him that it was not necessary.

For many years, whenever he had visitors visiting the monastery, he would avoid showing them the wall with the 2 bad bricks as he was ashamed of it. One day, he was leading 2 visitors around when he forgot about it, and he led them past the bad wall. One of the visitors remarked:"That's a beautiful wall."

Ajahn Brahm was aghast. He immediately said:"How can that be? Dear sir, do you not see the 2 ugly bricks that are crooked?"

Visitor:"Yes, I do. But, I also see the other 98 good bricks that make this a beautiful wall."

Sometimes, we focus on the shortcomings of the people around us and even ourselves to the point that we forget about the existence of the rest of the things that make us like them in the first place.