Short Story: Mullah Nasruddin's philosophy of the happy cockcroach, led him to better understanding real happiness!

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The Mullah Nasruddin was in his garage one morning, and a cockroach was standing still, on the small rubber mat that he had there, inside his garage. The Mullah was also was just wearing his soft rubber thongs. The Mullah stepped on the cockroach once, and nothing happened. He then, before it could escape, quickly stepped on it again, both a second, and a third time. Still, it seemed unaffected, and then it suddenly gathered up its senses, and it run off quickly, to hide under a heavy nearby shelf. It was no doubt happy to escape, and perhaps with just a minor crush injury. There was no way that the Mullah was going to move that heavy wooden shelf away, to look for it underneath it. But, the Mullah realised that he was actually unhappy that it had escaped. A bare five minutes later, though, the Mullah was now outside of his garage, and then he saw this very same cockroach, on the concrete path now, having left the garage, maybe not happy with its former home anymore, as a huge invading monster had almost killed it in there. But again, it hesitated for a brief moment. It was all that the Mullah needed. He squashed it much harder this time with his foot this time, and as it was not on the soft mat this time either, the Mullah fully had expected to send it to glory land, this time too. The Mullah then lifted his foot, gingerly, though, and miracle of miracles, this hardy little creature was still alive. For, the final thrust then, the Mullah then slammed down as hard as he could with his foot, and for good measure, he now twisted his foot too, grinding it into the dust of the concrete path there now too. This time, for the fifth, and final time, it, the cockroach, was now finally fully dead. The Mullah was happy now. Was the cockroach also happy in Nirvana land too? Another cockroach sent up there to annoy God? "Happiness is only mostly relative then. Relative to our own circumstances, it seems," the Mullah mused to himself. "We cannot extract happiness from anything, but we sure can place it in there." "Happiness is often up to us, both the happiness that we create, and the happiness, that we destroy." "Happiness is often seen to be just the bubbling up of satisfaction, that comes from seeing things in our own way, following that way, and hence most happiness is a selfish happiness." "Only when you love without wanting does real happiness arise then from your heart, not crowded out by the false happiness wanted from your mind." The Mullah went inside his house, and he wrote up the whole of this little episode, for his telling out, at his coming sermon/talk, on Saturday night, in the community hall, where he lectured every Saturday, to the people from his great source of knowledge. For, after all, he was the esteemed revered great Mullah Nasruddin, the educated scholar, Holy man, and counsellor figure for the whole village, the rest of who were mainly ignorant, illiterate, poor farmer types. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com This cockroach had five lives, before it succumbed finally, to/at the foot of its master.