UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

It was seven o’clock in the evening but was totally dark and the temperature was nearing ten degrees Centigrade. The cool breeze outside was so severe that the car heater could barely maintain the internal warmth. I was driving from Hudson north of Albany towards Paulson bay in outskirts of New York. Hearing a ‘thud’ sound behind my car and noticing that somebody stoned my car breaking its rear glass, I stopped my vehicle with a creaking sound of brakes and got down.
I found a boy standing at the right side of the road with another stone in his hand. To my surprise he was not trying to run away. I caught hold of his shoulder and yelled furiously why he had done it. “Nobody is stopping the car. What should I do?” was his answer.
On the right side of the main highway, there was a narrow pedestrian path for evening walkers at four-foot height. The boy showed me an old man on the other side. Spotting the wheel-chair, I could make out that the old man has accidentally slipped down from the road.
“I tried to pull him up but couldn’t” the boy said “and was trying for help since past two hours, but nobody stopped” he explained for his drastic action. I had nothing to argue. I knew how “busy” people are. I helped him to put the elderly man back on wheels and chair on the track.
“You should be proud of your grandson” I said, “for two hours he stayed in this chilly weather and courageously took a decision to stop my car.”
Pushing his chair in the opposite direction from us the aged man said, “I am certainly very proud of him, but is not my grand son. He is a traveller like you.”
Quoting this incident, Abraham Lincoln says in his book, “I still keep the stone with me as a symbol of selfless love. Love is when you take away the relation, passion and romance, but still care for the other person.”
 

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