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Once there was a group of fifty tortoises
travelling to seek and collect food for their home. The trip was a very long
one for them. It might take a hundred or a thousand years. They didn’t even
know the exact distance of the place to which they were going but they knew
there was an area where they could find much good food to bring home. So to
achieve their goal they had to take cooked food as well as uncooked food with
them to eat on the way; otherwise they could fail to reach their goal. After
they had travelled for fifty years, there was no cooked food left. So they
tried to prepare the uncooked food but to their surprise, they had forgotten to
bring salt to mix with the curry to enhance its flavor. Then their leader
ordered the youngest one to go back and get some salt because he was strong,
quick and young. Actually he didn’t want to go but he was ordered by his leader
to go because he was the youngest among them. He asked the group to make a
promise before he left. That was to wait for him to get back before eating any
food (He let them wait for him to eat any food before he get back). All of them
agreed to keep the promise and he disappeared from the spot. After he had been
gone for two hundred years, he had still not come back. By this time all the
tortoises were hungry and weak; they were getting thinner and smaller.
Eventually the leader decided to order them to start eating some food. At that
time the youngest tortoise who had been waiting for such a situation appeared
from hiding behind a tree near the group and said “You all broke your promise.
So now I won’t ever go and get the salt!
The moral of this story is that most people
delay their work because they are waiting for each other to finish it. Some
work can be done in a short time; instead people take a long time to finish,
especially when in an association, in an organisation, or in a party.
If someone does something for the benefit of
others, they must sacrifice a part of their life.
Written by Thawma,
Please comment if you see any mistake.
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