Sand & Stone

You may have heard this one before.

I hadn't.

I liked it enough to share with you here:

...once upon a time two friends were walking through the desert. At one point on the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:

Today my friend slapped me in the face.

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to get get in the water and cool off. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the other one came to the rescue. After recovering from the near drowning, the one who had been saved wrote on a stone:

Today my friend saved my life.

The friend, who had slapped and saved, asked, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand. Now, after I saved you, you write on a stone. Why?"

The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it, but when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone, so no wind can ever erase it."

~ Author Unknown