Once I was vacationing in Thailand and while I was walking back to my place in Bangkok, I noticed a truck in the side street that led to my place. It was carrying a large metal frame object. It was stopped and holding up traffic because it couldn’t get pass low hanging wires. I saw a person on top of the truck wrapping a wire around the tangled wires. I believe that the intention was to secure the tangled wires together, drive the truck forward and lift the tied wires over the metal frame. It seemed like a good idea and simple solution, thought I wasn’t sure what type of wires they were (electrical or telephone). If they are just telephone wires, then it would be safe to touch, but in doing so, you could damage someone’s phone service. If it is an electrical wire, you could kill yourself. I felt bad in one sense because the truck was stuck in a narrow side street. Traffic was piling up behind them and traffic could not enter the side street.

After seeing this, I thought about how I deal with situations in life. Sometimes I make the situation overly complicated when it isn’t (just wrap the wires and lift it over the object when we drive under). Sometimes I jump into situations without understanding the consequences to others (while wrapping the wires, we can solve our situation, but in doing so we can disrupt someone’s phone service), or understanding the potential consequences to myself (dying from an electric shock). One day in dhamma class we were talking about the consequences of my actions toward my son. I was reminding him of the need to stay on top of his studying (direct and easy like tying the wires together). I didn’t understand the consequences of this approach because it caused him a great deal of stress (disrupting the phone service). In hindsight, I have to encourage him to study more, but at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way (i.e. not every day).

Further, beside the above situation, I need to think more before I act and understand the consequences of my actions otherwise I can cause more damage than good.