THE WAY OF WISDOM

A life without disputes is not possible. Whether you live among your own people or among strangers, conflicts will arise between you and others. You cannot prevent disputes from happening. But what you can do is to end them at the very first stage and save yourself from their harmful results.

Sometimes ignoring is enough to end a dispute. Someone may speak provocative words against you. The best response is not to get provoked. In this way, you crush the dispute at the very beginning.

Sometimes a troublemaker may hurt your dignity and turn it into a matter of honour. Even in such a situation, the best way to preserve your dignity is not to react. Remain silent, remembering that it is God who grants honour and it is God who takes it away—so why get entangled with another person over it? Such an attitude is often enough to bring the conflict to an end.

Sometimes a dispute seems connected with gain and loss. It may appear that if you adopt patience and avoidance, it will cause material loss. But this is not correct thinking. In such matters, the real choice is not between loss and no loss, but between smaller loss and greater loss. Ending the dispute at the first stage leads to smaller loss; while prolonging it leads to greater loss. So why not leave the path of greater loss and take the path of smaller loss? We cannot stop disputes from arising. But we can certainly protect ourselves from the fire of conflict by choosing the path of avoidance. Let us accept smaller loss in order to save ourselves from greater loss.