Once upon a time a young man took up a job in an orphanage. In a very short time he found that this was very difficult work. The home was full of children that came from broken homes. In the beginning he tried his best to care for them. He tried to show them kindness but the children were very bad and mean and vindictive. They attacked him in every way possible. The young man tried to feel empathy for the children but they were cruel. He followed the strict rules of of the house and could not understand why they would not listen to him. Even though he did not show it, he was angered by the things the bad children did and said.
Days and weeks passed, the young man and the bad children never stopped arguing. What made the situation worst was that the more he tried to do his job the worst the children behaved. The more he tried to follow the rules the more cruel the children became.
Soon the young man was filled with anger and resentment. Finally he could not take the abuse from the bad children anymore and he decided to do something about it. The man went to see his friend who sold special herbs. He described the situation and told him about the things the children were doing to him. He asked if he could give him some poison so that he could solve their problem once and for all.
His friend agreed. "I will give you some pills that will slowly build up the poison in their bodies. Every other day prepare their favourite things to eat and put a pill in their food. In order to make sure no one suspects you, you must be very careful to act very kind towards the children. You must treat them as if they were your own and show them love."
The man agreed and then thanked his friend. He was so happy and could not wait to get back to work to start poisoning the bad children. He remembered what his friend had said about avoiding suspicion. He controlled his temper, listened to the children and treated them as if they were his own.
After about six months has passed the entire orphanage had changed. The man practiced controlling his anger so much that he found he almost never got upset. The children were not as cruel and were much easier to get along with. They even started to trust him and do as he asked. They began to tell people that this was the best place they had ever lived and that it felt like a real home.
One day the man went back to his friend to ask for his help once again. "Please help me to keep the poison from killing the children. I was terribly wrong about them. They are not bad at all and I do not want them to die because of the poison," the man begged.
His friend smiled. "There is nothing to worry about." He said, "I never gave you any poison. Those pills were vitamins to make them full of energy and to give them good health. The only poison was in your mind. The only poison was your attitude. When you began to show the children kindness it made them feel loved and cared for."
"When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be." -T.S. Monson
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