Astonishment will only intensify when we allow this meaning to enter our minds, let alone embody it: how does cruelty, with its arrogance and pride, transform into a gentle meaning? Then we live with it as an indispensable necessity, far from all its emotional effects of pain, panic, and fear. Cruelty transcends the violent sound of its linguistic expression to a truth we need daily. In a scene that may not be repeated nor observed except with the eye of insight: a horse, in its peak vigor, tries to emerge from the mud in which it has sunk and become stuck, as if bound by a thick rope to the ground. Every time it tries to rise, it sinks deeper into the mud until it reaches the middle of its body. It tries another trick to get up: it buries its head into the mud with force and extraordinary combat strength, hoping to find firmness from the ground, but alas. It changes its method by tilting its body to both sides, but that was a critical response that could cost it its life. From this direct sensory scene, I learned the meaning of gentle cruelty, and I was inspired by the saying of the Truth: "It is He who made the earth tame for you, so walk among its slopes" (Quran 67:15). That is why the face of the earth is hard and stable in its place so that it does not sway with us; if it were otherwise, we would suffer greatly.

When we feel that cruelty and softness are far apart in the different paths of life, we violate the truth of the philosophical dimension of meaning with our narrow view of each face. Our thinking becomes tied only to the extent of our emotional awareness, and we judge based on the appearance of things, not their essence. This reductionist view sees cruelty as generating conflict, discord, and states of distance, while softness approaches an intimate and familiar space, and that humans enter it—i.e., softness—with tranquility and even a sense of security. In reality, this excludes our capacity for true awareness. It is a narrow view that has made cruelty a small window, and this view has neutralized our ability to think consciously about these life concepts and stopped us at the boundaries of the fixed conventional, not the variable according to phenomena and relationships with different elements. When we surrender to the first idea of cruelty and softness, we do not find ourselves before the image of the trapped horse, and we remain with a stereotypical image with its ugly, unchanging face. This does not grant us the ability to think to see the face of gentle cruelty. This is what some children may see towards their parents when they consider themselves victims of parental cruelty. But as they grow up, their angle of awareness changes, the accusation of cruelty completely disappears, their father is exonerated, and they realize that it was the most important legislator for the future, for meanings, values, and noble ideals, after having lived and understood the state of responsibility, and felt that it was a cruelty that bleeds tears and blood, and that it was a stage from which they learned beautiful meanings for our culture. In summary: What mattered to me from this discussion was understanding the philosophical direction of the idea and meaning. When we roam in the space of the meaning of the word back and forth, and cross from one bank to another, we find that meaning gives us a broad philosophical and cognitive dimension culturally and socially, and that the idea expands into wider fields and allows us to see the meaning of beauty, even if it lies in cruelty itself. This makes us perceive the colors of life and its diversity, and then the truth of gentle cruelty crystallizes for us.