Moral story:

               A FOOLISH STAGE

 

‘All that glitter not gold’ is an old adage. It connotes that all attractive things are not really valuable. Several things glister like gold, but actually they are not gold. Appearance is usually deceptive. The idiom, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ also conveys the same meaning. We cannot estimate the value of thing by its appearance; rather we should examine it minutely to discover its real worth. Abu Hurairah reported that the message of ALLAH said: “ALLAH does not look at your appearances or your financial status, but he looks at your hearts and your actions,” Helen Keller says in this context: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart”. It may not be out of place to quote Aristotle here when he says: “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

                          Once, a stage felt very thirsty. He went to a stream to quench his thirst. The stream was full of cool water. He drank his fill. Eventually, he caught sight of his reflection in the clear crystal water of the stream. He greatly admired the size and offshoots of his antlers that looked so outstanding in beauty and grace. He felt tremendously proud of his being such a paragon of beauty. While he was captivated by the striking elegance of his antlers, he caught sight of his thin legs.

              “the beauty of his antlers praised,

                But at his legs in horror gazed:

                They looked like spindles as they shrank

                Out of his sight beneath the bank”

He became downhearted and disappointed. He began to deplore his hard luck for having such clumsy slender legs and cloven hoofs. Thus, he became ungrateful to Allah. It was like finding fault with divine hand. He scolded nature for making him imperfect. All of a sudden, he heard the howls of hounds from a distance. A sudden fright paralyzed him. He saw a pack of hounds racing toward him. The innate instinct to save his life startled him from his numbness and he look to fight with breakneck speed. As long as the plain was smooth and open, he kept himself easily at a safe distance from the hounds. Soon he got away from the hounds. Eventually he had to cross a patch of forest overgrown with thorny bushe. While running through the thickly grown thickets, his attractive antlers of which he was a proud got entangled in them. He made desperate efforts to free himself, but all to no avail. His lean legs, which he hated so much, had proved of huge help to him. But his majestic antlers hard put him on the threshold of death. He thus reproached himself: “Woe is me! How I was decided! The hoofs which could have saved me I despaired, and I gloried in these antlers which have saved me I despaired, and I gloried in there. They fell upon him and tore him apart.

 

POSSOBLE MORALS:

 

(1). Appearance is always deceptive

(2). All that glitter is not gold

(3). Do not find fault with the divine hand