A rabbi was once sitting with several of his students. He said to one student, "Could you please bring me a cup of coffee with two spoons of sugar?" The student brought the coffee, and the rabbi sipped it slowly, continuing his discourse with the students.
A bit later, the rabbi went into the kitchen himself for coffee, and just as he was about to put the sugar in the coffee, his wife said, "Don't do that! That's salt, not sugar." It turned out that the student had mistaken the salt for sugar and had put two spoons of salt into the rabbi's coffee.
"How could you drink the coffee with all that salt in it?" the rabbi's wife asked.
"What else could I have done?" the rabbi asked. "If I had refused to drink it, that would have embarrassed the student who made the mistake."
This rabbi was a spiritual person.
— Abraham Twerski, Happiness and the Human Spirit