The Old Man in the Court of Law

An Old Man in the Court of Law: Defamation fo Character

An old man said something unpleasant about a younger man, and what he said can destroy the man. The word keeps spreading until it reached the affected man, the man asked who said such a thing about him and he was told it was the old man. Out of anger, he went to the old man and asked the old man why he said such a disgusting thing about him, the old man answered saying he just said a little word which he didn’t even mean.
The man asked if he don’t know that what he said could tarnish his image, he said he’ll sue the old man for ‘Defamation of Character’ and the old man asked him to go on since the judge is a human being like them and that the judge will understand that he didn’t even mean it. So, the man sued the old man. At the court, the judge asked the old man why he said such a thing about him as old as he is. The old man answered saying he just said small thing about him which he don’t even mean and now he’s bragging around claiming he’s tarnishing his image.

The judge, being a wise man asked the man to write what he said on a sheet of paper, he wrote it and showed it to the judge, ‘just two lines’ he said ‘and he is shouting my name as if I had said something wrong’. The judge asked him to tear what he wrote from the paper and then into pieces as tiny as he could make it look, the old man did the same and then the judge asked him to put the tiny pieces in his hand, enter his car and drive with his hand outside. The old man drove off and came back after a few minutes and said to the judge that the breeze has blown everything off as he is driving, the judge then asked him to go back and bring all the pieces blow away by the air and gather them before him. The old man said he cannot retrieve every pieces that the papers are tiny and that some would have been blown into bushes and dirty waters and many to far places and so on. Then the judge said to him saying that is the way what you said about him travelled, you can’t retrieve whatever you say because you don’t know where it has gone.

Moral: Be conscious of whatever you say about others, whatever you say cannot be retrieved and you don’t know where it has reached. Remember a Proverb that says “A person with bad name is already half hanged”. Don’t tarnish another man’s name and image they’ve so much built with your nonsense and careless talk.