Aesop's Fable Friday

The Trees and the Ax

A Woodman went into the forest and begged of the Trees the favor of a handle for his Ax.

The principal Trees at once agreed to so modest a request, and unhesitatingly gave him a young ash sapling, out of which he fashioned the handle he desired.

No sooner had he done so than he set to work to fell the noblest Trees in the wood.

When they saw the use to which he was putting their gift, they cried, "Alas! Alas! We are undone, but we are ourselves to blame. The little we gave has cost us all: had we not sacrificed the rights of the ash, we might ourselves have stood for ages."

Moral of the story: When the strong surrender the rights of the weak, they endanger their own privileges.

I do so love these fables. It is easy to apply this wisdom to historical events. It is also easy to see that nothing changes under the sun. Humans are still making the same mistakes that others have made before us. In America we try very hard to stem the tide away from evil. As a nation we seek to apply this wisdom for ourselves and for those not as fortunate as to have been born in America the Beautiful. I don't believe that the fight will ever end. (Rasta: The trees don't really talk, so don't worry. lol!)

Speaking of misfortune, I have been laid up with - of all things - an arthritic knee. One of my knees blew up to the size of a...well...a small watermelon, I suppose. Yikes - painful too! This has never happened to me before. The other knee, which has always been the bad knee, was fine. Things are almost back to normal now, with the original bad knee now being the bad knee and the arthritic knee down to the size it is supposed to be. Arthritis! Can you imagine? I had no idea that a person's joints could misbehave so.