The Guest Who Sets Your House On Fire
By onGOHing
He was welcomed into the house in the hope that like most others who crossed the treshold of your home he would be part of the family. You treated him not as a guest but a family member. He had family rights. You gave him big roles to play within the family. Not token or cosmetic but high-level positions, important work that was key to your family’s business. He was entrusted such big roles that even those who became family members much much earlier than him were not priviledged to have until today.
But it was never enough for him.
His attention was not on those tasks assigned to him. Even important family meetings he often felt wasn’t worth his attention nor attendance. He had the opportunities to make progress in the family life and gain admiration and gratitude if only he were willing and able to perform his duties. Even his criticism would have found hearing ears at home if only he had earned respect to be listened to by fufliing his domestic assignments. (You are asked to wash the plates not leave it in the kitchen sink or worse still, break it.)
As it turned out, after just a year in the family home, he wanted to be second only to the patriarch and matriarch of the family. Which was fine too by the family rules except for the way he went about it.
By his own admission, he loved calling “a spade, a spade”. That was as long as he was the one doing the calling. But when others started calling a spade, a spade in regard to him, he cried foul and took great exception to the fact that the spade which was his favourite tool of choice when found in another person’s hand and turned against him became what he called ‘sabotage’, and ‘lies’.
I need to check, before I next pick up my garden tool, but could it be that he was the fellow who did the world the favour by inventing the spade? Only he had the right to use a spade?
Read more at: http://ongohing.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/the-guest-who-sets-your-house-on-fire/
