A Soul Fight
An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life...
"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
"One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
"The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
"This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"
The old chief simply replied,
"The one you feed."
The fight of goodness and evil exists in every person. All the time one finds himself between good and evil and has to choose according to what principles to live. Every day there is a choice if to tell the truth or lie, if to judge or forgive, if to spread gossips or stay away from them, if to return a lost wallet to its owner or keep it, if to try to stop evil or pass it by.
Everyone understands that justice, compassion, forgiveness, sincerity etc. are features of a healthy soul, and meanness, falsehood, arrogance, selfishness etc. – of an ill one.
But everything is not so ideal and sometimes a healthy soul gets sick and an ill one has a chance to be cured. It is a person’s choice what way to follow as all of the features mentioned above live inside him.
Very often a person cannot recognize the black sides of his soul and cannot value the situation he lives in and usually treats malice as a norm of life. Today civil marriage is a norm of life, and for our grandfathers it was absolutely impermissible behavior. For young generation such views of life are no more than prejudices which seem ridiculous and very old-fashioned. Modern girls react more aggressively on the suggestion of dressing in a more respectable way than on the suggestion of putting off clothes.
The most discussed topics nowadays are corruption, high crime rate, drug abuse, demoralization of society, terrorism. Everybody understands that there is something wrong with the humankind, some try to explain this fact. They guilt everyone starting from government and finishing with neighbors. And only a few people understand that the roots of all malice are inside of a one separate soul. Everything starts of the fight of two wolves inside a soul.
Then Satan said, "Because You have put me in the wrong, I will lie in ambush for them on Your straight path: (16) then I will surely come upon them from before them and from behind them and from their right and from their left, and then You will find most of them ungrateful."
Satan promises in Quran to seize a soul from all sides in order to misguide it from the right way.
The souls which he managed to seize are ill with hypocrisy, jealousy, greediness, the desire to have fortune (at least to have more than a neighbor has). Television, magazines, advertisement encourage a soul “to feed a black wolf” hiding this behind an idea of freedom of prejudices.
Hypocrisy is the worst of malice. Hypocrites will never show their real face, they will not show their intentions, they will not come as enemies, but they come with a smile and false good intentions and they will say that whatever they do they do it for the better future.
The hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of Hell, and you will find none to help them. (4:145)
We live in a time when there is a wholesome freedom for the malice. Human values are trodden down and lost in the past.
In order not to become a part of this treacherous world one should cure his soul “feeding a white wolf”.
The medicine is in the revelation of God. Allah teaches us how to cure the soul and follow the way which leads a human to Paradise.
One should remember religion does not restrict person’s freedom. Religion teaches people to share goodness: to respect parents, to take care of family, to share your fortune with poor ones, to seek for knowledge, to share knowledge, to stay away from the malice. Only a mad man can tell that these principles restrict his freedom.