The lady said, "All right, I will tell you what I have been suffering from for months and months," and she went on to tell him all her complaints about her ear.
The doctor asked her how old she was and she said, "I have forgotten how old I am, but let me think. Since I never tell a lie, let me not make a mistake in telling you my age. I was married when I was twenty and my husband was forty. Just the other day my husband said that our marriage is forty years old. So my husband is double the age that he was when we were married. I must also be double the age I was. So I am forty. Am I not correct?"
The doctor laughed at her and said, "Yes, you are correct. You are forty and he is eighty."
The lady got mad at the doctor and said, "My children and grandchildren are all educated, but they have such respect for me. They think that I know much more than they do. Here you are a doctor and you think that I don't even know how to count. Anyway, my main complaint is that I don't hear well."
The doctor said, "It is a great blessing that you don't hear well. Your children and grandchildren are leading their own lives, and all kinds of calamities are taking place. You are fortunate that you can't hear about these problems."
The lady said, "But when they have good news, I can't hear either. This hearing problem is a punishment."
The doctor said, "For each piece of good news that you would get, you would hear twenty bad things. So the best thing is for you to have a bad ear, so you can avoid hearing anything."From:Sri Chinmoy,The sailor and the parrot, Agni Press, 1981
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