20
PARABLES
thought?”
“In order to know all the great creations. To be happier, to help you.”
“Help me? You really have gone too far! I can take the best maiden in the
village for my wife. Any of them would marry me. Everyone wants to be rich,
to live in a spacious house and ride in my car.”
“Being rich does not mean being happy.”
“And being poor?”
“Being poor isn’t good, either.”
“Neither poor nor rich, then what?”
“Everyone needs enough. It is not bad to have a sufficiency as well, and
an awareness of what is going on around you. After all, happiness does not
come to people all of a sudden.”
The entrepreneur grinned and drove away quickly. A year later, the two
neighbor fathers met to consult. They decided it was time to find brides for
their sons. When asked which of the village girls he would like to take for a
wife, the son entrepreneur answered his father, “The daughter of the village
elder is to my taste, and I want to take her for my wife.”
“I see, my son, you have done wonderfully. The daughter of the village
elder is the most beautiful in the entire district. Everyone who comes to visit
our village from nearby villages and distant places goes into raptures when
they see her. However, she is willful, you know. Even her parents cannot un-
derstand the mind of this unusual maiden. She could even be considered
strange. Women from different villages have started coming to this young
maiden more and more for advice and healing from their illnesses, and they
are bringing their children as well.”
“What of it, father? I am nobody’s fool, either. In our village there is no
home more spacious, no car better, than mine. In addition, I have twice seen
her look at me long and hard.”
The second father asked his son the same question.
“Who in the village is most to your liking, son?”
The youth replied, “I love the daughter of the village elder, father.”
“What does she think of you, my son? Have you seen her loving gaze?”
“No, father. When I met her by chance, the maiden lowered her eye-
