WATCHING THE GOAT

I'm pretty sure you've read the story about the kids whose teacher asked to carry tomatoes based on the number of people they hate for days till they started complaining about the weight and smell from the rot, which led to the lesson on forgiveness and letting go of hatred. Well, I kinda have a different version to that same moral lesson and I hope you get a double impact-Van Damme style. 

A man once decided his goat deserves to be punished for eating his tuber of yam. So he went to the market, bought the best rope with his last coins, took the goat to the trunk of the strongest tree he could find, tied the goat then got a chair on which he sat down watching and monitoring the goat making sure the it does not get loose. A diligent and excellent work he did right? Well, from another perspective he was but with all the measures put in place (the rope and tree trunk), logic will suggest he gets busy being productive because there is possibly no way that goat will get loose except it is being freed. The goat eventually did not go anywhere, neither did the man who tied it. That is what anger and hatred towards someone or something does to you. You end up exhausting all you've got in making sure the hate and anger remains intact and at the end of the day, you don't move simply because you don't want that particular person or thing to regain freedom, so you think you have a captive while in the real sense you are the captive because that goat does not even know what you are sitting there for so it eats the grass nearby or the one you provided, drink the water nearby or the one you provided and defecates in that place which you may have to be the one to clean up. The task is so tedious that even when you are served a plate of that goat's pepper soup, the joy and excitement will not be as expected because it can never compensate for the energy and resources expended.

I agree the goat ate your precious yam and by all means let it be punished but at what expense? You end up loosing more than just a tuber of yam but your own freedom and joy...on a goat that will never know it's wrong to eat your tuber of yam. I once heard a lady say she hates another lady walking in front of her, so I asked if she knew her prior to that time and she said no and that she was seeing her for the first time. So I got curious as to the reason why? I was shocked when she said the way that lady walks simply annoys her. I've never seen that level of whatever you want to call it before and I had to take off. Who knows maybe she hates me because of my short nails or even the color of my trousers.

You may have your reasons for punishing that goat (and I know goats are stubborn) but at what cost? Your own freedom and Joy? I don't think it's a worthy trade.

W. C Fields once said "I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally." I would have had issues with that statement if it were not from a comedian's debauchery (although I think Hitler and Stalin worked the talk). If you must hate, hate everyone equally and if you cannot hate everyone equally, then let love lead the way.

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