So this is also a story my Buddhism master taught me when I was in Taiwan 2 years ago.
Once upon a time, in a big city in the ancient China, two citizens started a huge fight.
They were fighting for a whole day and it got noticed by all the neighborhood. The fight divided the neighbors and soon they decided to complain to the government official of the city kind of like the judge.
At the entry of the court they started to hit the drum to call for the court to open (that's how it was ...to open the court you needed to hit on a big drum to call for the government official).
After a while the Government Official opened the court.
He asked why did you make a call to open the court?
The citizen A said: we had an argument for the whole day and we can't settle it
The citizen B: he is stupid and can not understand a simple thing
The official asked what was the argument about?
The citizen A said: I told him 3x3=9
The citizen B: but 3x3=10
Citizen A: NO, 3x3=9
Citizen B: I'm sure you are wrong 3x3=10
and they continued their arguments until...
The official stopped them and yelled...YOU! The one who said 3x3=9 go get your punishment!
Everybody in the audience were surprised by this decision!
The citizen A exclaimed: WHY?!???? I'm right though! why??
The official answered: The punishment is not because 3x3=9 is wrong but because you were stupid to argument with someone more stupid. You are wasting your time to argue with someone so dumb and stubborn to not learn so in this case the one who is dumb is you.
Teaching others is a good thing, trying to get them to understand is a good thing, but arguing for a long time and to not see a change in the other but to keep on insisting in the argument is completely dumb and basically making a fool of yourself.
All of us have a position on everything, but trying to make someone see your position when they just can't or just don't want to will lead to unnecessary argument.
I used to say to my patient, to make someone quit smoking, drinking etc is good, but if the one in front of you just can't listen to you or understand you and you keep on insisting it will basically like you bumping your head against a wall...so what's the purpose of that?
Sometimes we just need to accept that we all have different visions and instead of trying to get others to have the same vision as us we should just try to look from the others point of views and understand why others are looking that way.
-For a better future.
