Bhai Sud

     Once upon a time, in a village in the Punjab, there was a very old man named Bhai Sud. He was 86 years old and he was known for being very mature. One day, as he was talking his daily walk in the field, the village chief frantically ran out to give him a dire message, "Bhai Sud, there is a horde of bandits coming this way! They have been going from village to village, stealing everything, killing people and destroying everything in their path!"
     Instead of freaking out, Bhai Sud was very calm and said, "I'll just stay right here, don't worry about me." Well the chief couldn't argue with the respected and wise Bhai Sud, so he sadly went back to the village to protect everyone else. Bhai Sud calmly waited until the fearsome, rowdy horde of murderous bandits arrived. They asked him, "Why aren't you hiding in the village with the rest of the people? Don't you know we can just kill you right now!?" He said, "Oh I'm just watching how foolish you all are."
     This outraged the bandits but they had to ask him more. "Explain yourself!!!" So he made up a story. He said, "The village got word that you were coming to raid us. I thought we should just offer you some money and hope you will spare us and move on to the next village. The chief called me a coward. He also had an idea and he kicked me out of the village so that you could kill me. You see, one third of the village wants to fight you, but if you kill me, the other two thirds will definitely fight you as well.... Ah, what do I care, I can never come back to the village... go ahead and kill me now."
      Well, the leader of the bandits thought a little, and then asked, "How many people is one third of the village?" Bhai Sud said, "That is about 3 times as many men as you have here." The bandits thought, "If we kill this old man, than the other two thirds will fight us too, that is almost 10 times more than we are!" They said, "We shouldn't kill him, if we do we will all surely die!" Then the calm old man said, "Well if you don't kill me, than I advise you to leave right now, and you better go fast." As suddenly as they arrived the bandits thundered off on their horses and the village was saved. 
     The villagers asked Bhai Sud, "What did you tell them?? How did you scare them away??" He told them the whole story and they were amazed, "Wow! How did you come up with such a brilliant plan? Did you plot this idea a long time ago?" He said, "No, I had no plan. It is just that I'm old enough to know how to talk to people who have childish minds. It wasn't that I had a clever idea, it is that I have wisdom. Let me tell you something, I decided long ago that I'm going to live a peaceful life, I love my God and my Guru and I don't care if the whole world blows up, I won't change how I live."
     The moral of the story is this: Wisdom is when you know exactly who you are. Nothing can distract your peace, nothing can shake you from your center of calm. That is where wisdom comes from. The reality is, everything in this world may change, but nothing will ever change the fact that you are a child of God. 
This story was adapted from a story from "72 Stories of God, Good, and Goods" by Yogi Bhajan, page number 110.