Five wise men were walking through a forest and got lost. It wasn’t easy to find their way. They couldn’t come to a common decision either, so each sage did something different. Which of them made the right decision, and which one was wrong?
– My intuition tells me to go left,” said the first sage.
– And I think we should go to the right, because the word comes from “right,” said the second sage.
– I’ll go back where we came from, that’s where we have to go back to,” said the third mate.
– The forest must end, because everything ends, so we must keep moving forward,” said the fourth sage proudly.
– You are wrong, listen to me. We need to get out to the tallest tree and see where we are,” suggested the fifth sage.
While he looked for the tree and climbed it, all the wise men went their separate ways. At the top of the tree, they could see in which direction they had to go to get out of the forest. The fifth sage could observe his friends and even guess which of them would be the first to reach his goal.
He considered himself the winner because he had solved the problem on his own. The others simply tried different solutions and hoped for success. Their stubbornness set them up. He should not have been so confident, for he was not the only one who had won.
The first sage who moved to the left found himself in a slumbering forest. He starved and hid from forest predators for days. After a while he learned how to survive in such conditions and get food, his knowledge the first sage could share with others.
The second sage encountered a potential danger – evil robbers were on the right side. They robbed him of all his valuables and made him like an outlaw, forcing him to rob and intimidate poor people. But wisdom and experience helped him to re-educate the robbers, to teach them to be kind and sympathetic. The remorse of the criminals was so sincere that after the death of the second sage they began to follow his path.
The third sage set out on a broad road, moving in the opposite direction. He arranged it so that soon other people could safely walk through the forest without fear of getting lost.
The fourth sage became a pioneer. He visited places where no man had ever set a foot. He found amazing medicinal plants, unseen animals, and good nature.
The fifth sage became an expert in finding shortcuts in the forest. Many people lost in the dense wilderness turned to him.
Thus all five wise men showed real wisdom and fulfilled their destiny. The moral of this parable is this: true wisdom is the desire to follow one’s own path, for every path is special to man.
