If you’ve followed me for a minute, you know I’m obsessed with literature. My screen name, Devoted Friend is a reference to an Oscar Wilde short story, The Devoted Friend. I have carried it’s lessons with me for many years, if you are unfamiliar with it I highly recommend it. I think most of us at various times in our lives identify with Little Hans and there are unfortunately times we behaved as the miller.
The Devoted Friend is a story about motivations, the miller is a powerful, well respected and wealthy man. He befriends Little Hans and Hans is grateful and humble happy for the friendship he freely gives everything he has to the point of sacrificing his own comfort and sometimes basic needs. The miller makes promises he could easily keep with little to no sacrifice. Hans believes that the miller is a righteous man and will honor his word. I won’t spoil the ending if you are unfamiliar with the story.
I’ve been thinking about this story lately from both perspectives. What we say, what we do and how we justify what we do says a lot about our morals and our character. Why do we allow ourselves to be treated a certain way by others? Is it because we believe that’s all we deserve? And what about how we spend our time? What we do to our bodies? Hans was very noble and happy he was always willing to help at any cost.
What price are we paying to keep the peace to make others happy? Or simply to give others the benefit of the doubt? What is it costing us? Sometimes the attention we are giving to a client, friend, relative etc. that doesn’t have are best interest is taking away from our time and attention we could be giving to ourselves or to other who do truly care about us? I’d love to discuss this story with others it clearly has tremendous value to me. Ironically I’ve opened up to others in the past and shared this and they didn’t bother to read it, further confirming the lessons contained in the story. Here’s a link to the storyhttps://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DevFri.shtml if you do read it please share your thoughts below!