Kahlil Gibran has written a beautiful story. This single man has written so many beautiful stories that there seems to be no comparison to him in the whole history of man. This story is a very small story, and that is where Kahlil Gibran’s beauty is. He does not write big stories that can be made into films; his stories are only of a few lines, but penetrating – to the very depths of man.

The story is: God created the world, and he created everything else that was needed. He looked around and he felt that two things were missing: beauty and ugliness. So the last things he created were beauty and ugliness. Naturally, he gave beauty beautiful clothes and to ugliness, ugly clothes; and He dropped them from heaven to come to the earth.

It is a long journey, and by the time they reached the earth they were feeling tired and dusty, so the first thing they decided to do was to take a bath. It was early morning, the sun was just rising, and they went to a lake, dropped their clothes on the bank and both jumped in. It was really refreshing and cool, and they enjoyed it.

Beauty went swimming far into the lake, and when she looked back, she was surprised; ugliness was missing. She came back and she found that her clothes were missing too. Then beauty understood what had happened: ugliness has taken her clothes and run away. The story ends: since then ugliness is hidden in the clothes of beauty, and beauty is compulsorily wearing the clothes of ugliness. Beauty is running after ugliness, searching for her, but she has not yet been able to find her.

It is a beautiful story. Ugliness needs something to hide itself behind, to help it pretend – to have a false mask. Beauty had not thought about it at all; the idea had not even occurred to her that this was possible, that ugliness would steal her clothes and run away.

The man who has a heart throbbing with goodness, with blessings, feels no need to be the president or the prime minister. He has no time to waste in this ugly game of power politics. He has enough energy. That, good brings with itself. He will create music, he will compose poetry, he will sculpt beauty in marble; he will do something for which power is not needed. All that is needed is already provided for him. That’s the beauty of good, that it is intrinsically powerful.

Let it be very clearly understood: You can be certain that anything that needs power from outside is not good. It is something intrinsically impotent; it will live on borrowed life.

So in life this strange situation happens: bad people reach good positions, become respectable or honored, not only in their time but throughout history. It is full of their names.