There are two kinds of pleasures, one which is personally gained and one which is inherited. Personal pleasure, in any way, is a pleasure but the happiness inherited is not worthwhile until accompanied by personal experience of that happiness.
Joy of a nation is in receiving both types of happiness. One pleasure is that they get a chance for individual sacrifice and the second pleasure is that their ancestors were also blessed with the opportunity to sacrifice in the way of God. When a nation has attained both these types of happiness, then their pleasure is complete. When a person sees that his parents were revered and respected but he is in disrepute, his heart is filled with sorrow.
It is related in history that a rich poet went to a public bathhouse to take a bath. The rich poet asked for a servant to massage his body. The owner of the bathhouse sent a strong young man from his employees to give him a massage. After donning the underclothes and taking off the rest, the poet sat down in a Jacuzzi, perfumed water flowing over his body. The servant started rubbing fragrant lotions on his body. The poet went into a state which took his self to melody and he started muttering a couplet.
When the poet was reciting the couplet, the condition of the employee changed. He uttered a cry and fell down unconscious. The poet suspected that the employee had an epileptic fit. He called the bath owner and complained, “You have sent an afflicted and sick person to attend on me.”
The owner apologized and said, “I did not know of the sickness of the young man until today. He was quite healthy.”
Anyhow, they revived the servant and asked, “What is the matter? You did not have an epileptic fit until today.”
The young servant asked the poet in a nervous manner, “The couplets you recited, who did you hear them from?”
The poet said, “They are mine. I love them very much because I used to be very poor and longed even for a piece of bread for dinner. Then I found out that a son was born to Fadl Barmaki who was a minister from among the ministers of Harunur-Rashid, and was a son of the prime-minister, Yahya Barmaki. Poets were invited to write and bring poetry for a contest, and whoever won the contest was to be rewarded. So, to judge my fate, I also wrote a few lines and came to the meeting. On my turn, I recited those couplets. Fadl Barmaki, his brothers and father liked those couplets so much that they gave me millions, and many servants, and horses and many camels, and silverware and gold utensils, and carpets and floor coverings, and handed over a big treasure of perfumes. I was stunned viewing all that. I said that I did not even have enough space in my home for them. They told me not to worry as their servants had bought for me just then such and such large building in so and so neighborhood, and that their servants would take all that to that building right then.
I am counted among the rich since that day. These couplets are quite beloved to me because they changed my condition and took me out of poverty and introduced me to affluence.”
The servant said, “Do you know that I am the son for whom the couplets were written, which has raised your status to this height? When I heard these couplets from your tongue, I remembered the occasion about which I had heard from my caretakers, that on my birth a poet was given so much reward. I thought, that child on whose birth this reward was given and for the couplets that award was given, a stranger is reciting those couplets today in the bath with comfort and peace, and that boy for whom those couplets were recited is massaging him as a servant.”
The poet was affected so much by this that he hug him and started crying and said, “All my wealth has been given to me by your grandfather and it actually is yours. Come to my home and I will serve you as a servant and will not let you experience any inconvenience.”
That boy replied, “The humiliation we have seen already is quite overwhelming. I do not want to face more humiliation by using the award which was given away by my forefathers. As my secret is now out, I cannot live here either. I will go away to some other land where no one knows me and would not remember the humiliation of my ancestors.” Saying this, he left that place and no one knows where he disappeared.
Look, this is an example of the reverence of ancestors in which the progeny lost their share, and could not benefit their children, but rather became a source of sorrow for the children.