The two wolves!
An elderly man says to his grandson, who had come to see him very angry at a friend who had been unfair to him:
Let me tell you a story… I, too, sometimes feel hatred toward those who behave badly and feel no remorse. But hatred exhausts you and does not hurt your enemy. It is like swallowing poison and wishing your enemy would die from it. I have often fought these feelings.
He continued: "It's as if I have two wolves inside me; the first is good and does me no harm. It lives in harmony with everything around it and does not take offense when there is no reason to be offended. It fights only when it is just to do so, and it does so justly. But the other wolf, ahhh…! It is full of anger. The smallest thing drives it into fits of rage."
He fights anyone, all the time, for no reason. He is unable to think because his anger and hatred are immense. He is desperately angry, and yet his anger changes nothing. It is sometimes so hard to live with these two wolves inside me, because both of them want to dominate my mind.
The boy looked his grandfather intently in the eyes and asked, "Which of the two wolves wins, Grandpa?"
The grandfather smiled and replied softly: "The one I feed."
A Native American fable told in the evening around the Sacred Fire
