Mourning a mouse

Have you ever had moments in life that have left with you with the aftertaste of a lesson well-learnt? You know, when things happen and then a short while later you say: "Aah,that taught me a lesson". well this is one of those moments.

For the past few weeks i have been terrorised by a mouse, yip- you heard me right, a mouse. Fast, small, furry- seriously they creep me out. Anyway, i kept on just wishing that the thing would die already; that he'd swallow the poison, or get caught in the trap. Well this morning he eventually died- the poison turned out to be his undoing.

Now instead of being pleased that he was gone, i was, wait for it... sad! I was really sad to see that the little thing had died, because i had poisoned it. So i kept on reassuring myself- he's unhealthy, unsanitary, etc... Yes, i had reason to get rid of him but my emotions got the better of me and left me feeling sorrow and sadness.

When I thought about it further i realised that in this lied a very important life lesson. I had gotten rid of him, I was nasty and cruel, irrational and emotional, simply because i was afraid, and because he was different. Sure he was a dirty rodent- i had to get rid of him, but how many times in life have we rejected other things due to fear or ignorance?



Think about it, how many times in life have we rejected people or even ideas, simply because they are different from our own? How many times have we been cruel and nasty to others just because we found them annoying? If they were to die (hopefully not due to poison) wouldn't we feel sorrow for the way we behaved? If they were to die, wouldn't we feel regret and guilt?
Sure, I'm taking this incident out of context- i mean you can't really compare mice to people, but the whole incident just spurred these thoughts and made me realise that while people are around we need to work extra hard to make sure we treat them well. They wont always be around to irritate and annoy us so maybe we should just try to hang in there, exercise patience and make sincere dua to Allah(SWT) to make us better people. I'm gonna try it out, will you...?