Sand and Stone

There is a story about two friends who were walking through the desert. Halfway through the journey they had an argument and one friend slapped the other in the face.

The one who was slapped felt hurt, but without saying anything he wrote in the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”

They kept on walking until they found an oasis where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped began to drown and his friend saved him. When he recovered from the ordeal, he wrote on a stone: “Today my best friend saved my life.”

His friend asked him, “Why, after I hurt you, did you write in the sand and now you write on a stone?”

The man, smiling, replied: “When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away. And when something great happens, we should engrave it on the stone of the memory of our heart, where no wind can erase it.”