In this story narrated by Nithya Shanti, a spiritual teacher, he talks about how there was once a man with a beautiful house. In fact, it was the most beautiful house in the city. The man once travelled to a different city and came back after a few days. On arriving, he witnessed smoke coming from a distance and wondered what was going on.
As he turned to the corner, the man couldn’t believe his eyes that it was his very own beautiful house that had caught fire. He started trembling and crying. Soon, the man’s son came and said to him, “don’t worry father, it will be alright.” To this, he said, “how can everything be fine? Our house is burning.”
Surprisingly, the son said: “there you will have to forgive me because somebody offered us an unbeatable price. He offered us three times the price of our house, it was such a good offer I couldn’t refuse. Thus, I sold the house”.
His father straightened up and asked him, “did you sell the house?”
Just then, his second son came and asked, “father how are you so relaxed? Our house is burning!” The father replied: “son don’t you know your elder brother sold this house for a really good price.” To this, his son said that the buyer hasn’t paid us yet. Hearing this, the father started trembling and his face went all red.
Soon enough his third son came trying to relax his trembling father. The father said, “your elder brother has sold the house and we haven’t even received the money yet.” The son replied, ‘I met the man who proposed to buy our house and the buyer said that he will give whatever he promised.” The father calms down looking at the house as if someone else’s house was burning. The crux of the story is that the secret to happiness lies in one’s ability to detach themselves from the situations and view the scenario objectively.