Short Story on The Importance of Defining Blame

(Note: I happened on this story here on Quora, as an answer by Prashant Sharma. I decided to share it here because I like it. )

A bus full of passengers was on its journey. Suddenly the weather changed and there was a huge downpour and lightning all around. Lightning storm

The passengers saw that lightning appeared to strike their bus but then it moved ahead without hitting the bus.

After two or three such instances, the driver stopped the bus about fifty feet away from a tree and said –

“We have somebody in the bus whose death is a certainty today. Because of that person everybody else will also get killed. I want each person to go one-by-one and touch the tree trunk and come back. Whosoever’s death is certain will get caught by the lightning and will die. But everybody else will be saved”.

They had to force the first person to go and touch the tree and come back. He reluctantly got down from the bus and went and touched the tree. His heart leaped with joy when nothing happened and he was still alive.

This continued for the other passengers who were all relieved when they touched the tree and nothing happened.
When it was the last passenger’s turn, everybody looked at him with accusing eyes. This passenger was also very afraid and reluctant. Everybody forced him to get down and go and touch the tree.

With the fear of death, the last passenger walked to the tree and touched it.

There was a huge sound of thunder and the lightning struck the tree across the street, which fell on the bus, and killed each and every passenger inside the bus.

It was because of the presence of this last passenger that thus far, the entire bus was safe and lightning could not strike !

Sometimes we try to take credit for our achievements, but this could also be because of a person right next to us.

Look around you -Probably someone is there around you, in the form of Parents, Spouse, Children, Siblings, Friends, etc, who are saving you from harm!

Think about it.

(Which ends the story as written and posted. However, I would like to add that aside from defining blame with family “parents, spouse…” we can also define blame (or credit) with  founders, bosses, co-founders, employees, office mates, etc.)

(Image: Source: Free Photo Bank – Cloud-14 Licensed under creative commons attribution license.)

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