Monkey and the Fish
The fish loved the river. It felt blissful swimming around in its clear blue waters. One day while swimming closer to the river banks it hears a voice say, “hey, fish, how is the water?”.
The fish raises its head above the water and sees a monkey seated on a branch of a tree.
The fish replies, “The water is nice and warm, thank you”.
The monkey feels jealous of the fish and wants to put it down. It says, “why don’t you come out of the water and climb this tree. The view from here is amazing!”
The fish feeling a little sad, replies, “I don’t know how to climb a tree and I cannot survive without water”.
Hearing this the monkey makes fun of the fish saying, “you are totally worthless if you cannot climb a tree!”
The fish starts thinking about this remark day and night and becomes extremely depressed, “yes, the monkey is right”, it would think, “I cannot even climb a tree, I must be worthless.”
A sea-horse sees the fish feeling all depressed and asks it what the reason was. Upon knowing the reason, the sea-horse laughs and says, “If the monkey thinks you are worthless for not being able to climb the tree, then the monkey is worthless too cause it cannot swim or live under water.”
Upon hearing this the fish suddenly realized how gifted it was; that it had the ability to survive under water and swim freely which the monkey never could!
The fish feels thankful to nature for giving it such an amazing ability.
Moral of the story:
This story takes from Einstein’s quote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.
Take a look at our education system that judges everyone based on the same criterion. Coming out of such a system, it’s easy for many of us to start believing that we are actually less gifted than others. But the reality is far from it.
The fish in the story attains self realization. It realizes what its true power was thanks to its friend. In a similar way, the only way to realize your true potential is to become self aware. The more awareness you bring into your life, the more you realize your true potential.