Be a person of Fortitude

The quality of fortitude enables you to face all kinds of obstacles and calamities which befall you during the course of your life with equanimity. Remember that there is no person on earth – from the richest to the poorest – who has not suffered pain of every kind, physical and emotional. That you get into painful situations does not in any way make you unique. But how you deal with the pain does make you unique. A useful story to remember here goes like this: There lived a very rich man in a wonderful city near which there stood the ashram of a wise mendicant. The rich man squandered away his wealth and soon became almost a pauper. When he could no longer live in the style he was used to, he went to the sadhu and cried before him. He describe how he had fallen on bad days and asked for a solution to his problems. The sadhu brought him a sealed mud pot and said, “The day you have lost everything, open this pot and find your solution.” The main waited for a few days till everything he owned was gone. Then he opened the pot. Inside was a piece of paper on which were the words, “This too shall pass!”

Reading this cryptic message, the rich man knew that there was a future awaiting him and that he alone could change it. He began to work hard and save money diligently. Soon, he was back on the path of recovery and was well off enough to feel buoyed. He went once more to the sadhu and invited him for a meal to express his gratefulness. Th sadhu came and before sitting down to dinner, asked the man to get the mud pot back to him. When the pt was present to him, the sadhu asked the rich man to open it once again and read the message: “This too shall pass!” said the paper. Thus the sadhu impressed upon the man that in life, circumstances keep changing like light and shade. A man/woman who sails through both good as well as bad times, is a person of fortitude and courage. Learn from this parable the quality of remaining untouched by the exigencies of time. Expect change and you will not be caught unawares by the cycle of life and its changing patterns.