A wild and self-assured man was walking along the beach looking for a girl everyone was talking about; he found her near the water’s edge, gently strumming her guitalele. He approached her with a determined stride, gave her a flirtatious smile and said:
‘Hello, beautiful. Tell me, where are the gates of heaven and hell?’
The girl stopped strumming the strings, looked him up and down indifferently and replied:
‘Talk to you? Look at yourself – you think you’re some irresistible heartthrob, but you’re just a shallow, vain man. I’m not going to waste my time on someone like you.’
The man seethed with rage; feeling his ego deeply wounded, he picked up a large, heavy stone from the sand and raised it above the girl’s head in blind fury, ready to strike her. She, without moving or losing her composure, looked him straight in the eye and said softly:
‘That is the gateway to hell.’
The man froze; in an instant he understood everything. His own fragility and his pride had almost turned him into a monster. the girl had not flinched at his threat; filled with shame and humility, he dropped the stone and sat down on the sand, lowering his gaze to apologise to her. The girl picked up her guitalele again, strummed a sweet chord and said to him:
‘And this is the gate to heaven.’
Heaven and hell are not places we go to; they are states of mind we choose to inhabit at every moment
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