Life Lesson - Rusty Nails On The Wooden Stilts

This is a story that took place in a distant village, about a young rebellious man who has a bad habit of gambling, drinking, taking drugs and so much more that made his family, especially his father who is worried about his son's future. No matter what the father said nor his advice, it only fell on deaf ears, and the son keeps on doing all the bad habits without any will to repent.

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One day, the father told the young man, "son, I've tried to advise you and asked you to stop doing all the bad habits of yours, it is detrimental to our family, and especially yourself. From now on, every time you do a bad deed, I will hammer a nail into this wooden stilt. If you do a good deed, I will take out one nail".

The father did exactly what he has warned his son, every day he hammered a nail into the stilt everytime the son did something wrong, sometimes even more than ten nails in a day. Rarely he will take out the nails as the son seldom do anything that is right. Day by day, weeks by weeks and months by months pass by, and the stilt is almost filled with nails from the bottom to the top, and most of it is rusted and looks really ugly. The son feels disgusted looking at the number of rusty nails on the stilt and feels ashamed. Since that moment, he made a vow to change his bad habit and started to be someone that his family can be proud of. On that day alone, his father took out five nails from the stilt, and after a few weeks, only one nail is left.

So the father called out his son and showed him the single nail still stuck on the stilt and he said, "look, my son, this is the last nail that I am going to withdraw, aren't you happy with all the effort that you have done to be a better person today?". The son looked at it and he started to cry, the father was confused, he didn't expect that his son will be sad. "Why are you crying, my son? Aren't you happy to see that all of the nails are gone?", he asked. "You are wise my father, indeed the nails are gone, but even then, it still left a mark and rust on the stilt", said the son, sobbingly.

The moral of the story

My dear friends, doing bad things regularly, in the end, it will be a norm or a habit of our self. We might be able to dispose off this habit slowly with gallant effort, but it will surely leave a mark in our lives and in the memory of others. We can never be fully cleared or cleaned even though we have discarded all the bad things that we have done, but getting rid of it is better than not doing an effort to improve at all.