Your character is your destiny

“A wealthy man requested an erudite, scholarly person to help his son give up his bad habits. The scholar took the boy for a stroll in the garden. He showed a tiny sapling and asked him to pull it out, which the boy did easily, using his thumb and forefinger. The scholar showed a slightly grown plant to pull it out, which required some pressure and pull from the boy to uproot it along with roots and all. ”Now pull this one out,” the scholar said, showing a bush, for which the boy had to use all his strength to pull it out. Next, showing a full-grown tree, the scholar asked the boy to pull it out – using all his strength.

The boy grasped the trunk of the tree and tried to pull it – he just couldn’t do it. The tree is deep rooted and very firmly stuck in the ground. Seeing the boy pant and gasp for breath, the scholar said, ‘my boy, it is the same with bad habits, when they are still young, you can pull them out from your system – once they take firm hold of you, they cannot be uprooted. So, give up your bad habits right now !” Those words of great wisdom, explained in a very practical manner, influenced the young boy’s mind and he worked at giving up bad habits and he easily succeeded at it.    

"A bad habit has a long term negative consequences, but it still gives immediate comfort that’s why unaware of the negative consequences people so blissfully get addicted to the immediate comfort ". They cannot accept the 'bad' of their habits, but can accept the situation of becoming socially unpopular and unacceptable.

Alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity are to the physical health, what gossiping, backbiting, criticising, jealousy and hatred are to the mental health. These are the habits which are termed as "bad". Some people, when things go wrong, thinking that life had been unjust and unkind to them, in self-pity join the downward trend and take to drinking, drug abuse etc and their lives will  further be snarled up by bad habit patterns followed by bad human relations.

What can rescue us from temptations that surrounds us? If we are aware of the end results, how bad habits can really hurt and twist our lives, worse still our children's lives and probably may result in a broken home, we will develop a defense mechanism, which will make us 'pause, stop and not proceed' into darkness of evil habits.