Green Living NYC

This is a bit of wisdom from Arun Gandhi, director of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-violence in Memphis, a non-government institute that teaches the philosophy of non-violence. Here Arun tells of a formative lesson he learned while living in India with his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi. Give it a read if you'd like. "We have to remember, when we talk about violence, it's not just the physical violence that we see around us. There is much more to it than just physical violence. And grandfather made me aware of this one day when I was coming back from school and I had this little notebook, writing pad and a pencil. And I was about 13 years old at the time, quite an irresponsible 13 year old. Walking home absentmindedly I looked at the pencil. It was about 3 inches long, and I said I deserve a better pencil. This is too small for me to use. And I was so confident that grandfather would give me a new pencil that without a second thought, I threw that pencil away. And that evening when I went and asked grandfather for a new pencil, instead of giving me one he subjected me to a lot of questions. He wanted to know what happened to the pencil I had in the morning, how did it become small, where did I throw it away, and on and on and on. And I couldn't understand why he was making such a fuss over a little pencil until he told me to go out and look for it. And I said, "You must be joking! You don't expect me to go out and look for a pencil in the dark?” He said, "Oh yes I do, and h