CONFUSING MORALITY!

Recently I came across a post of Elena Gabor in the Li and utterly marooned by the unique way of rendition of a story which I have given below. The story with its huge emotional appeal will invariably move the readers and hardly give any scope to think with reasons.?

About Teaching

An old man meets a young man who asked:

“Do you remember me?”

And the old man said: No. Then the young man tells him he was his student, And the teacher asks:

“What do you do, what do you do in life?”

The young man answers:

“Well, I became a teacher.”

“Ah, how good, like me?” the old man asked.

“Well, yes. In fact, I became a teacher because you inspired me to be like you.”

The old man, curious, asks the young man at what time he decided to become a teacher. And the young man tells him the following story:

“One day, a friend of mine, also a student, came in with a nice new watch, and I decided I wanted it.

I stole it, I took it out of his pocket.

Shortly after, my friend noticed the his watch was missing and immediately complained to our teacher, who was you.

Then you addressed the class saying, ‘This student's watch was stolen during classes today. Whoever stole it, please return it.’

I didn't give it back because I didn't want to.

You closed the door and told us all to stand up and form a circle.

You were going to search our pockets one by one until the watch was found.

However, you told us to close our eyes, because you would only look for his watch if we all had our eyes closed.

We did as instructed.

You went from pocket to pocket, and when you went through my pocket, you found the watch and took it. You kept searching everyone's pockets, and when you were done you said ‘open your eyes. We have the watch.’

You didn't tell on me and you never mentioned the episode. You never said who stole the watch either. That day you saved my dignity forever. It was the most shameful day of my life.

But this is also the day I decided not to become a thief, a bad person, etc. You never said anything, nor did you even scold me or take me aside to give me a moral lesson.

I received your message clearly.

Thanks to you, I understood what a real educator needs to do.

Do you remember this episode, professor?

The old professor answered, ‘Yes, I remember the situation with the stolen watch, which I was looking for in everyone’s pocket. I didn't remember you, because I also closed my eyes while looking.’

This is the essence of teaching:

If to correct you must humiliate; you don't know how to teach.

Now the question is, why the person tend to steal? How many times before the incident he was able to evade from being caught? On contrary, a teacher is at all sensible to keep himself blind about such immoral act and catch the thief with an intention to mend his character? There are numerous instances we came across in our available society where a teacher stole the research work and innovative idea of his student and successfully claimed it as his own work and sometimes the dispute being settled outside the ambit of judicial intervention. Stealing is a tendency which we human as a social being latently possess with an intention of craving matters which we may not possess and inequality plays the key role for instigating such trait on us. Stealing itself has changed its format in this present technology driven world where cyber crime is nowadays an intriguing feature, posing major threat to our social fabric and even changed the definition of stealing!

?To eliminate this vice(?) should we follow a blind method devised by our so called innovative way and can rectify a social evil which ingrained on us owing to social disparity? Apparently there is no moral lecture being told by the concern teacher in the story, but the story alone contain a moral intent with a vision to diffuse all latent antagonism with peaceful resolution which is merely an effort to build castle in the air. I must acknowledge that story telling is a unique art and the twist in the end bears an eloquent testimony about we human are large moved by emotions which though may cause riot to our reasons, still we indulge it to satiate our souls desire by peaceful means. I honestly give due credit to Elena Gabor for enabling me to delve into her lovely story which ushered me to gain a holistic view about the society we all are living. To me, the moral of the story is, not to remain blind and accept views which are rendered by others with their fascinating nuances and ponder about the reasons behind any incident to manifest, as we all know that nothing happens in this world without any reason. As we poor human instantly cannot fathom the reason behind any incident, we may tend to define it as an accident and perhaps unfortunately become the victim of the accident. It should be our top most agenda, how to get rid of the realm of acident to the realm of freedom, where we may not have to crave others wealth and have to resort to unfair means, only to defile ourselves.