Being truthful to oneself

Age : 4+ years

Vasu is studying in eighth grade and he is very good in studies. He listens to his teachers in the class very attentively and studies well at home too. His mother helps him with studies at home. He always stands first in his class. One day he had the final exam of mathematics and he had prepared it very thoroughly. His parents knew that since he works so hard he will score full marks in mathematics. When he was in the examination hall, he started answering the questions one by one very neatly in his answer sheet. He already knew those questions so he was very happy. But when he looked at the last question in the question paper, he was shocked, he did not know anything about that question and did not know what to do. He was getting restless as he was expecting to score full marks in this exam. He was thinking and looking around and somehow he managed to look at the answer sheet of another student who had done that particular question. He got tempted to copy the same answer on his own answer sheet, he started doing that also. But then he remembered one thing that his mother always told him, be truthful to yourself first and then to others. He realized that by copying this answer he is not being truthful as he is giving an impression that he knows that question himself but the truth is - he does not know how to solve that question. He immediately felt very relieved and erased what he had already copied and started checking the other answers that he had already written on the answer sheet. He felt extremely confident that what he did was the right thing to do. He came home and told the whole sequence of events to his parents. They were very proud of Vasu and told him that what he did was the only way of doing it right. They were more happy now than if he had cheated and got full score.

God is Watching

Age : 4+ years

Anay and Bansi are very good friends. They study in the same class. They are neighbours too. They walk to their school together and enjoy each others company a lot. Everyday in the evening, they play together in the playground. Anay is very hard working boy and does his work in school very sincerely. He has beautiful handwriting. All the teachers like him a lot. He and his work is appreciated by all his teachers.

Bansi is also a good boy but he is very careless in doing his work. He understands everthing nicely but when he does his written work, he is always in a hurry to finish it off soon so that he gets free time. This makes his work messy and handwriting bad.

One day, in the school, the teacher gave a project to write about the wild animals, to the whole class which they had to submit the after five days. All the students were working hard to make their project report more beautiful. Finally it was the day to submit the project. On that day Anay fell sick and was in no condition to go to school himself. Since it was the last day to submit the project, he was very worried. His mother thought of an idea that since Bansi is going to school so he can take Anay's project also with him. His mother took Anay's project in the morning to give it to Bansi so that he takes it school. Bansi was happy to take Anay's project for the submission. While walking to the school, out of curiosity, he opened Anay's project. When he saw Anay's beautiful handwriting and how neatly he had done his work, he realized how bad his own project looks in comparison to Anay's project work. He felt jealous of Anay and at that moment, he wanted to spoil Anay's project a little bit so that it does not look perfect. He took some mud in his hands and smeared it on Anay's project. Now it was looking muddy and dirty.

In the school, Bansi submitted both the projects to the teacher.

When the teacher started giving marks to the students for their project works, she was surprised to see Anay's work dirty. She knew that Anay's work was always the best then she remembered that Bansi had brought Anay's project and she thought, he must have dropped it while bringing it to the school. So she gave the maximum marks to Anay for his project work and for his sincerity to do everything beautifully. For Bansi's project work, she gave him very less marks as it was as usual, very badly done and that too in very bad handwriting.

Even though Bansi thought that he was intelligent enough to spoil Anay's work when no body was watching him. There is God, who is watching each and every action of all and He does not let anyone down who does good work and does not let anyone get away by doing wrong things. So before thinking of acting wrongly, remind yourself that God's eyes are on each one of us always.