WHAT DO YOU SEE?

This story has been retold countless times in countless ways over many centuries. It happened like this:

A traveler approached a great, walled city. Before entering the gates, he stopped to talk with an old man seated beneath a tree.

‘What are the people like in this city?” asked the traveler.

“How were the people from where you come?” wondered the man.

“A terrible lot,” grumbled the traveler.

“Mean, miserable, and detestable in all respects.”

“You will find them here the same,” responded the old man.

A second traveler soon happened by. He, too, was on his way to the great city and stopped to ask the old man about the people he would soon meet there.

The old man repeated the question he asked the first traveler. “How were the people from where you came?”

To this the second traveler answered, “They were fine people. Generous, kind, compassionate.”

“You will find them here the same,” observed the old man.

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“Really listening and suspending one’s own judgment is necessary in order to understand other people on their own terms… This is a process that requires trust and builds trust.” ~ MARY FIELD BELENKY

 

Colorful Shades of Gray

Another little ditty from the in-box…

 

Moths are very ugly creatures. At least that is what I always thought until a reliable source told me otherwise. When I was about five or six years old, my brother Joseph and I stayed overnight at our Aunt Linda’s house, our favorite relative. She spoke to us like adults, and she always had the best stories.

 

Joseph was only four years old, and still afraid of the dark, so Aunt Linda left the door open and the hall light on when she tucked us in to bed. Joe couldn’t sleep, so he just lay there staring at the ceiling. Just as I dozed off to sleep, he woke me up and asked, Jennie, what are those ugly things near the light? (I had always liked that he asked me questions because I was older and supposed to know the answers. I didn’t always know the answers, of course, but I could always pretend I did.) He was pointing to the moths fluttering around the hall light. They’re just moths, go to sleep, I told him.

 

He wasn’t content with that answer, or the moths near his night light, so the next time my Aunt walked by the door he asked her to make the ugly moths go away. When she asked why, he said simply, because they’re ugly and scary, and I don’t like them! She just laughed, rubbed his head, and said, Joe just because something is ugly outside doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful inside. Do you know why moths are brown? Joe just shook his head.

 

Moths are the most beautiful animals in the animal kingdom. At one time they were more colorful than the butterflies. They have always been helpful, kind, and generous creatures. One day the angels up in heaven were crying. They were sad because it was cloudy and they couldn’t look down upon the people on earth. Their tears fell down to the earth as rain. The sweet little moths hated to see everyone so sad. They decided to make a rainbow. The moths figured that if they asked their cousins, the butterflies, to help, they could all give up just a little bit of their colors and they could make a beautiful rainbow.

 

One of the littlest moths flew to ask the queen of the butterflies for help. The butterflies were too vain and selfish to give up any of their colors for neither the people nor the angels. So, the moths decided to try to make the rainbow themselves. They beat their wings very hard and the powder on them formed little clouds that the winds smoothed over like glass. Unfortunately, the rainbow wasn’t big enough so the moths kept giving a little more and a little more until the rainbow stretched all the way across the sky. They had given away all their color except brown, which didn’t fit into their beautiful rainbow.

 

Now the once colorful moths were plain and brown. The angels up in heaven saw the rainbow, and became joyous. They smiled and the warmth of their smiles shown down on the earth as sunshine. The warm sunshine made the people on earth happy and they smiled, too. Now every time it rains the baby moths, who still have their colors, spread them across the sky to make more rainbows.

 

My brother sank off to sleep with that story and hasn’t feared moths since. The story my aunt told us had been gathering dust in the back corners of my brain for years, but recently came back to me.

 

I have a friend named Abigail who always wears gray clothes. She is also one of the most kind and generous people I’ve ever met. When people ask her why she doesn’t wear more colors she just smiles, that smile, and says, “Gray is my color”. She knows herself and she doesn’t compromise that to appease other people. Some may see her as plain like a moth, but I know that underneath the gray, Abigail is every color of the rainbow.

 

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“For me, music and life are all about style.”
-Miles Davis

 

The moral is…

This has circulated on the Internet for some time. I do not know its origin, but am always taken with the appropriateness for virtually any situation.

 

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might this contain? The mouse wondered…and then was devastated to discover that the package contained a mousetrap!

 

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning:

 

There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!

 

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

 

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

 

The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”

 

The mouse turned to the cow and said, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house.”

 

The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you but it’s no skin off my nose.”

 

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.

 

That night, a sound was heard throughout the house…like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

 

The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

 

The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

 

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

 

But, his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.

 

To feed them the farmer butchered the pig.

 

The farmer’s wife did not get well. She died.

 

So many people came for the funeral; the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

 

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

 

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember…when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one and other and make an extra effort to encourage one and other.

 

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He fables, yet speaks truth. –M. Arnold.