A woman who lived in a plush suburb one day decided to go shopping one day. She put on a fashionable outfit and her favorite perfume and headed out the door to catch the bus. As she hurried out the back door, she picked up a small sack of garbage in the kitchen so she could toss it in the garbage container on the way to the bus. However, she was so preoccupied with her shopping that the garbage bag remained inside her larger shopping bag as she boarded the bus.
Immediately, when she took her seat on the bus she noticed a terrible stench. She became angry, thinking the smell originated from the bus. She thought she might send a letter of protest to the city. She opened the bus window. Again, she noticed the smell, and thought they were moving through a neighborhood that just didn t care.
When she arrived at the shopping mall, she discovered that same horrible stench in every store she entered. She thought the whole world was going to the dogs. When she returned home, she opened her packages, only then to realize the source of the odor.
The source of our distress is not always outside us. Sometimes, we need to examine ourselves for the source of the stench we experience.