Dear LPG,

I have a short story for our readers.  It starts negatively but it does get better…   

The story is about a man, where he lived and his age aren’t really important.  He could even have been a lady… anyway poverty was his problem and this man was feeling really depressed and low; in fact he felt so low that he had decided that there was nothing left for him to do in this world.  There was only one alternative left for him.  He resolved to end it all.  His plan was to hang himself from a tree. So, one evening he got a length of rope, and everything else he thought he would need, selected a suitable tree and prepared. 

Having set everything in place he decided that he would eat a banana as a last meal so, while up in the branches of the tree and with the rope already around his neck he unpeeled the fruit and started to eat it.  He was so broke that this banana was all he could afford for his last meal. Unfortunately he dropped the banana peel and it landed at the base of the tree trunk just as a young boy was passing below.  He watched the boy pick up the banana skin and began to make a meal of it.

Seeing the boy’s action made him think.  “I could only afford a banana but that boy is even worse off than me if he has to make a meal of the skin that I threw away.  Perhaps I am not so poor after all.”

So he changed his mind, left the tree and called to the boy. 

The moral of the storey; is no matter how bad you feel, there is always someone who is worse off than you.  Taking the time to listen to someone else’s story, and see the world from another perspective can change your own life-perspective for the better.

HC, Camberwell