The Heat Is On

It is not even 10AM, and temperatures are already hitting 35ºC. At this time of the day, my little boys are normally running around in the garden, chasing the cats or each other. Today's heat completely knocked them out.
Billy is a bit grumpy these days. The heat is taking its toll on his mood. When I tried to cheer him up and asked him if he didn't know any proverb to alleviate his suffering, "you know, something like: The sun rises and the sun sets", he gave me one of these looks that makes you shut up immediately. I had forgotten that Billy knows his Bible and knows how that proverb ends.
But there are good news on another front. Aristoteles and I didn't get along very well in the first few months. Whenever he'd see me, he'd get really irritated, barking at me like crazy. Something about me made him furious, and I had no idea what it was. (Once he even suggested to my wife: "Why don't we leave the gate open? Maybe he'll just walk out and forget how to get home again.") The fact that I had saved him from certain death didn't seem to count much.
Obviously there was a certain reciprocity in our relationship. I called him "our little ugly one", or "philosophical fool". But when we decided that Carla and Isabella would spend January in Rio and São Paulo and I realized that I would have to spend an entire month alone with Aristoteles without my wife (the only one who protected me from Aristoteles' wrath), I knew that we had to find a way to coexist peacefully.
I changed my attitude. I stopped calling him names. I stopped barking back at him. I tried to be kind whenever he gave me a chance to approach him. And things began to change. A few days before Carla and Isabella left, Aristoteles jumped on our couch and laid his head on my lap. "Look how beautiful he is", I said to my wife. "I think you're friends now", she said.

Acts of love and kindness reveal the beauty in the objects of our love. They make them strong, and they make them shine. They bring out the best in them. That is why Jesus and other wise men taught us to love our enemies.