Dear Reader,
I got this parable from a friend and found it very
interesting, therefore sharing with you:
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a Wise
man and his disciple. One day during their travels, they saw a hut in the
distance. As they approached it, they realized that it was occupied,
despite its extremely poor appearance.
In that desolate place where there were no crops and no
trees, a man lived with his wife, three young children and a thin, tired
cow. Since they were hungry and thirsty, the wise man and his disciple
stopped for a few hours and were well received. At one point, the wise man
asked:
“This is a very poor place, far away from anything. How
do you survive?”
“You see that cow? That’s what keeps us going,” said the
head of the family. “She gives us milk, some of it we drink and some we
turn into cheese. When there is extra, we go into the city and exchange the
milk and cheese for other types of food. That’s how we survive.”
The wise man thanked them for their hospitality and
left. When he reached the first bend in the road, he said to his disciple:
“Go back, get the cow, take her to the cliff in front of
us, and push her off.”
The disciple could not believe what he was hearing.
“I cannot do that, master! How can you be so ungrateful?
The cow is all they have. If I throw it off the cliff, they will have no
way of surviving. Without the cow, they will all die!”
The wise man, an elderly man, took a deep breath and
repeated the order: “Go ahead. Push the cow off the cliff.”
Though outraged at what he was being asked to do, the
disciple had to obey his master. He returned to the hut and quietly led the
animal to the edge of the cliff and pushed. The cow fell down the cliff and
died.
As the years passed by, remorse for what he had done
never left the disciple. One spring day, the guilt became too much to bear
and he left the wise man and returned to that little shack. He wanted to
find out what had happened to that family, to help them out, apologize, or
somehow make amends. Upon rounding a turn in the road, he could not believe
what his eyes were showing him. In place of the poor shack, there was a
beautiful house with trees all around, a swimming pool, several cars in the
garage, a satellite dish, and more. Three good-looking teenagers and their
parents were celebrating their first million dollars.
The heart of the disciple froze. What could have
happened to the family? Without a doubt, they must have been starving to
death and forced to sell their land and leave. At that moment, the disciple
thought they must all be begging on the street corners of some city. He
approached the house and asked a man that was passing by, about the
whereabouts of the family that had lived there several years before.
“You are looking at it,” said the man, pointing to the
people gathered around the barbecue. Unable to believe what he was hearing,
the disciple walked through the gate and took a few steps closer to the
pool where he recognized the man from several years before, only now he was
strong and confident, the woman was happy, and the children were now good
looking teenagers. He was dumbfounded, and went over to the man and asked:
“What happened? I was here with my teacher a few years
ago and this was a miserable place. There was nothing. What did you do to
improve your lives in such a short time?”
The man looked at the disciple, and replied with a
smile:
“We had a cow that kept us alive. She was all we had.
But one day she fell down the cliff and died. To survive, we had to start
doing other things, develop skills we didn’t even know we had. And so,
because we were forced to come up with new ways of doing things, we are now
much better off than before.”
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The question to ask ourselves is: What is that ‘Cow’ in my
life that I need to ‘push off the cliff’? If you feel any gap between your
reality & your true potential, there would be some ‘Cow’ for sure.
May this parable help you in letting go your comfort zone
and unfurling your true potential.
Warm regards
