STORY - The Old Man and His Shoe

One day an old man boarded a bus. As he was going up the steps, one of his shoes slipped off. The door closed and the bus moved off so he was unable to retrieve it. The old
man calmly took off his other shoe and threw it out of the window.

A young man on the bus saw what happened, and could not help going up to the old man and asking, "I noticed what you did, sir. Why did you throw out your other
shoe?" The old man promptly replied, "So that whoever finds them will be able to use
them." 

The old man in the story understood a fundamental philosophy for life - do not hold on to
something simply for the sake of possessing it or because you do not wish
others to have it. We lose things all the time. The loss may seem to us grievous
and unjust initially, but loss only happens so that positive changes can occur
in our lives. We should not always assume that losing something is bad, because
if things do not shift, we'll never become better people or experience better
things. That's not to say of course that we only lose "bad" things;
it simply means that in order for us to mature emotionally and spiritually, and
for us to contribute to the world, the interchange between loss and gain is
necessary. 

Like the old man in the story, we have to learn to let go. The world had decided that it was
time for the old man to lose his shoe. Maybe this happened to add momentum to a
series of events leading to a better pair of shoes for the old man. Maybe the
search for another pair of shoes would lead the old man to a great benefactor.
Maybe the world decided that someone else needed the shoes more. 

Whatever the reason, we can't avoid losing things. The old man understood this. One of his
shoes had gone out of his reach. The remaining shoe would not have been much
help to him, but it would be a cherished gift to a homeless person desperately
in need of protection from the ground. Hoarding possessions does nothing to
make us or the world better. We all have to decide constantly if some things or
people have run their course in our lives or would be better off with others.
We then have to muster the courage to give them away. 

WRITTEN BY EUGENE LOH 
A Slice of Life is written, produced and presented by Eugene Loh unless otherwise stated.
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