There once was a boy who loved sweets. He always asked for sweets from his father who was a poor man and couldn’t always afford it. But the boy didn’t understand, and demanded sweets all the time.
The boy's father thought about how to stop the child asking for so many sweets. There was a pious man nearby. The father decided to take the boy to the man who might be able to persuade him to stop asking for sweets all the time.
The boy and father went to the great man. The father said, ‘O saint, could you tell my son to stop asking for sweets which I cannot afford?’ The pious man was in difficulty, because he liked sweets himself. How could he ask the boy to stop asking for sweets? He told the father to bring his son back after a month.
During that month, the pious man gave up eating sweets, and when the boy and his father returned, he said to the boy, ‘My dear child, will you stop asking for sweets which your father cannot afford?’ From then on, the boy stopped asking for sweets.
The father asked the saint, ‘Why didn’t you tell my son to give up asking for sweets when we came a month ago?’ The saint replied, ‘How could I ask a boy to give up sweets when I loved them myself. In the last month I gave up eating sweets.’
An example is more powerful than words. When we ask someone to do something, we must be doing it ourselves for the message to be effective.
Practice What you Preach
