A big enough flame

     A boy was passing a group of peasants who were trying to light a fire. They gathered dry wood and as soon it was alight, they put on some larger wet logs and the fire went out. This happened again and again. The boy was saying: you have to wait until the fire of the dry wood is big enough before putting on the wet logs. The peasants gathered enough dry wood and make a fire with huge flames before putting the wet logs and the fire was burning for a long time. 

    I think something similar is happening to all the kindness in the world. We kindle it with dry wood and all to soon we try to convince the wet logs, the people consumed by greed and selfishness, to follow us. The greedy ones mock us and the fire goes out. I think we need a critical number of people to truly believe and practice daily random acts of kindness and inspire as many as possible among us who are not drenched in greed and selfishness, let us kindle a huge fire with the "dry wood" and have a blaze of kindness that will not go out no matter how many wet logs drenched in greed and selfishness try to douse it. 

    I think the above is quite true. Our own fire has to be big enough before we can have an effect on others. Big souls like Ghandi were living a truth like this: be the change you want to see in the world. I love to think that one day soon the world will experience a true kindness and wisdom revolution. Let us all be part of the critical number of "dry wood", so we have a flame of kindness burning hard enough to warm up all those drenched in greed.

The above metaphor was inspired by a passage in a short story by Leo Tolstoy ("the godson")