A thought provoking quote by Martin Luther King Jr –“We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.” This citation got me thinking as recently, I heard a motivating story preached by our Parish Priest how the porcupines hold a great lesson for all of us. It’s simple yet a very inspiring story which etched in my heart and I am sure all of us who believe that we can live by ourselves and do not need support or help from others, will surely be encouraged.
The story goes like this – “It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizsng the situation, decided to group together to keep themselves warm. This way they covered and protected themselves, but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After awhile, feeling the discomfort, some porcupines decided to avoid the pain and moved away. As they distance themselves from one another they began to die, alone and frozen. So, they had to make a choice: either to accept the pain of quills of their companions or disappear from the earth. Wisely, they decided to get back together and work it out as they learned to live with the little wounds caused by their close relationship in order to stay warm and survive.” The porcupines in their moment of distress realised it was better to stay together and survive rather than go out on their own and die. Getting poked by the quills seemed like a small price to pay for survival.
This is a perfect example where we learn to accept each other and to live in harmony with each other specially during the time of crisis or even otherwise too. This story fascinated me as well as motivated me that together we can achieve a lot and do a lot better for ourselves.
Frankly speaking, it kept me thinking whether we do likewise in our relationships too, as staying and working together, then? Many of us never like the thought of being close or rather comfortable with another person and have always liked the idea of being distant. To build a community we need to live together even though we have ups and downs, certainly it’s difficult but together we can try to work towards it and finally achieve it, hence it’s often said that the best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person’s good qualities.
None of us are perfect as apparently all of us have issues, which can lead us to harming others or doubt. And quite frankly, unless we accept other’s imperfections, we’re never going to come together. This is a very timely myth because I feel that today people are very judgmental and easily discomfited by behavior that is anything other than being optimistic. People don’t want to deal with other people’s attitudes, sadness or anger, by ignoring, or discounting it, instead of just hearing the person. It’s very unfortunate relationships are very superficial. Finally, we all need to be pricked as well as prick in the process of addressing the darkness of our human existence which most people still refuse to see, similarly to the porcupines.
