The Easy Way Out: A Modern Fable

Once upon a time in a land very much like ours, stood a peaceful little village. In this village all who lived there were happy and very hard working. Villagers would toil in the fields and in gardens gathering crops, pulling weeds, and sewing seed, always very proud of the work they did.

At the end of every day the village would gather to celebrate the accomplishments that were achieved and pay compliments to each other for outstanding work. As every person knew, their work could be seen by all who passed through the village each day. Every one took great pride in having the best looking fields and gardens. They all knew if they worked very hard it would show.

Now there lived a quiet, shy woman in a neat little cottage, and every morning she would wake earlier than all the others in the village, well before the sun approached the morning sky. She would go about her work with loving care and she paid attention to every detail. She would work as hard as she might everyday. With all her effort she would work until days end, but she knew that no matter how much she tried, her work and effort would again go unnoticed by the other villagers. Her gardens and fields never showed the care and sweat she put into them.

The quiet woman would lay on her bed at night scolding herself for not working hard enough, for being a failure. She would tell herself that she would never be like the others, never be able to do the same job and accomplish the same beautiful gardens. Every night she would fall asleep wondering why her best efforts were just not good enough.

One morning she made her strongest vow to herself, a vow to work earlier, longer, harder, faster and with new resolve she set out. She bent and pulled, knelt and tugged, raked and shoveled, never stopping or looking back. She kept to her task, straight ahead, until at last the sun fell below the trees. She stood and for a moment wiped her brow feeling proud, she just knew the work would finally show.

As she slowly turned to gaze upon the gardens and fields, she saw there in the last rays of the sunlight a site that made her heart sink. She began to weep, began to shake her head for she found that even though she had struggled toward her goal with such dedication and diligence she remained nearly where she started that morning. Slowly she lowered her head, feeling the shame of failure once again.

That night the quiet woman fell to bed worn from the work and feeling very beaten by defeat. "What's the use", kept repeating in her mind. As she feel asleep she thought "it's just not fair that I try so hard to be like all the others, yet I am not able." "If only there was some way to do this." "Some tool..."

The quiet woman awoke to a dim light coming from the window of her room. Slowly she stumbled from her bed, thinking she was already late getting started. She suddenly realized that she had given up and really didn't want to step onto the path that led to the gardens. But she got dressed and stepped out the door just the same. There in the middle of the path, in the pale light stood a fairy! The fairy held in her hands a shinning, gleaming object. She held it out to the quiet woman and said "this is the tool that will help you acheive your goal". "It will not do all the work for you, but it will make your task easier." "You must take care of this tool, or you will lose it". The woman's heart began to soar, she became aware of the smile that covered her face. Then in that moment she stopped. "How can I take this tool, what will the others think?" "They may think I have tricked them, they will be wary of me." To this the fairy replied quietly, but firmly "this tool that I have given, is a tool that you have earned." "You have spent your whole life trying to keep up and be like the all the others of your village." "They will understand, and given the choice they would choose it as well."

With that the woman took the tool in her hands and began to work the row. She felt a new power to her strokes, she saw the results behind her. She suddenly knew that she would be like the other villagers at last. She would now see the results of her hard work and so would the others who passed near her gardens and fields.

The moral of this story is if given a choice we would all choose the tool that helps make the task easier and more successful. If we have spent half a lifetime striving to achieve something why would we give up "the tool" and continue on a path of no success?