Life is a Life-Long School

One way of looking at life is to think of it as a school that extends, quite literally, from womb to tomb. Life is a life-long process of education that provides us with innumerable potential educative experiences, each of which can teach us something valuable for our spiritual evolution.
The lessons we can learn through the myriad experiences that life affords us is no mere theoretical learning, limited to knowing more facts. Rather, it is a form of experiential learning that can impact on our very being, shaping not just what we know but how we are as persons. Responding meaningfully to every situation we are faced with in life can help us grow in wisdom and character. In this way, we can evolve spiritually and thereby fulfill the purpose for which God has sent us into the world.
Allow me to share one such learning experience I had the other day, when a report on a website about a good-hearted man in a town that is facing an acute water-shortage caught my attention. This man, a school teacher, the report explained, has been giving away some 10,000 litres of water every day to 300 families and charging them nothing at all for it! Amazing, isnt it! God bless him!
I was so overwhelmed by the story that almost immediately, I sent the web-link to it out on my e-mail list. I wanted as many people as I could reach to hear about this incredible man. I love sharing positive stories with others, and this one was so brimming over with good news that it called for the widest possible publicity!
A few hours after I had emailed the story to my friends, I stepped out of the guesthouse where Ive been staying for the last couple of days. Just then, I saw two women coming my way. They were daily-wage workers. They were looking for water, they said. There was no water in the tap that they generally used. They had been working in the scorching sun for much of the day, doing back-breaking labour, and they were probably very thirsty. They may have wanted water to have a bath, too, after spending hours in the sweltering heat. It was getting close to dinner time and they probably also needed water to cook.
Now, I had stored some water in the bathroom, and I could easily have got more had I needed to. Yet, even as I listened to those two thirsty women and understood how distressed they were, it didnt strike me that I could share some of my water with them. I may not have parted with all of it, but I could easily have given them somejust a bit, enough for them to quench their thirst. But even that thought didnt cross my mind, although just a few hours earlier I had read and exulted in the story of that generous man who has been giving water to several hundred families every day!

How Very Ironical!
I shouldnt be too harsh on myself, though. While I didnt think about offering the women some of my water, I did try to be helpfulby telling them that they could inform the watchman to switch on the pump so that the tank from which they drew water could fill up. Saying that, I went back to my room, but soon after, I was assailed with the realisation that I had been extremely petty. MaybeI cant remember nowthe story of the man I had read about earlier that day flashed in my mind and it struck me that if he could do so much to help people desperate for water, I could have done at least a tiny fraction of that. If he could share 10,000 litres of his water with 300 families every day, couldnt I have shared half a litre of my water with just two people, and that too just as a one-time thing?
I realized that what I had donenot sharing any of my water with the women, but only giving them free advicehad been very wrong. I was ashamed at how self-centred I had been. I was struck by the irony of it allabout how I had energetically gone about advertising the story of the man who was so generous with his water, but at the same time had not thought of even sharing a mug of my water with those two thirsty women. I felt awful about myself. So much for my pretensions of being a do-gooder!

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