Benefit of doubt

[Guest guest]

One night there was a woman at the airport who had to wait for several hours

before

 

catching her next flight. While she waited she bought a book and a pack of

biscuits

 

to spend the time. She looked for a place to sit and waited.

She was deep into her book, when suddenly she realized that there was a young

man

 

sitting next to her who was stretching his hand and, with no concern whatsoever,

and grabbing the pack of cookies lying between them. He started to eat them one

by one. Not wanting to make a fuss about it she decided to ignore him. The

woman, slightly bothered, ate the cookies and watched the clock, while the young

and shameless thief

of biscuits was also finishing them. The woman started to get really angry at

this point and thought " If I wasn't such a good and educated person, I would

have given this daring man a black eye by now. " Every time she ate a biscuit, he

had one too. The dialogue between their eyes continued and when only one biscuit

was left, she wondered what was he going to do.. Softly and with a nervous

smile, the young man

grabbed the last biscuit and broke it in two. He offered one half to the woman

while he ate the other half. Briskly she took the biscuit and thought, " What an

insolent man! How uneducated! He didn't even thank me! " She had never met

anybody so fresh and sighed relieved to hear her flight announced. She grabbed

her bags and went towards the boarding gate refusing to look back to where that

insolent thief was seated. After boarding the plane and nicely seated,

 

she looked for her book which was nearly finished by now. While looking into her

bag she was totally surprised to find her pack of biscuits nearly intact. If my

biscuits are here, she thought feeling terribly, those others were his and he

tried to share them with me. Too late to apologize to the young man, she

realized with pain, that it was she who had been insolent, uneducated and a

thief, and not him. How many times in our lives, had we known with certainty

that something happened in a certain way, only to discover later that it wasn't

true? How many times has our lack of trust within us made us judge other people

unfairly with our conceited ideas, often far away from reality. That is why we

have to think twice before we judge others. Let's always give others the benefit

of the doubt before we think badly of them.