In plain words
With calm and patience, the strength to make allowances in every matter is much needed
You know Socrates, the great philosopher born in the West. This Socrates was always thinking, thinking, thinking, carrying on enquiry of this kind. One day, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’: he was enquiring into this question and was wholly lost in it. That evening he was going for a walk along a road. Along the same road a retired officer was coming, he too out walking with a walking stick. He was taking his walk turning his family cares over in his mind. The other was taking his walk enquiring into his own nature. Each lost in his own thoughts, neither saw the one coming towards him, and they bumped into each other. At once the retired officer said angrily, 'Who are you', that is, ‘Who are you?’ Socrates greeted the man with folded hands and said, ‘That is just what I want: please tell me who I am.’ The officer understood nothing of this. He went off on his own in silence.
Socrates came home and sat in his easy chair. He sat there pondering, 'Who am I'. It was eight o'clock. His wife served the meal. ‘Listen, the meal is ready, come, come,’ she called, poor woman. Socrates did not hear it. He was far away, deep in thought, lost to everything. She waited for an hour. She grew angry. She took a pot of water and poured it over Socrates' head. At once Socrates came to himself. ‘Every day it would only thunder. Today a cloudburst has come pouring down,’ he remarked. He kept his calm. Truly, if one of today's women came and poured a whole potful of water on the head, they would grab her by the hair, drag her and beat her. But he gave no room to anger that way. Since he knew his wife's nature from day to day, he smoothed it over calmly and patiently: ‘It always came thundering; but today it has come as rain.’