The Invisible Mentor

Archive for February 16th, 2010

The Buffoon and the Countryman

At a country fair there was a Buffoon who made all the people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals. He finished off by squeaking so like a pig that the spectators thought that he had a porker concealed about him. But a Countryman who stood by said: “Call that a pig’s squeak! Nothing like it. You give me till tomorrow and I will show you what it’s like.” The audience laughed, but next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. “You fools!” he cried, “see what you have been hissing,” and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter the squeals.

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

The Buffoon and the Countryman is from Aesop’s Fables but it provides an important lesson to us. When you read the above tale, what immediately comes to mind? What is the moral of the story and how does it relate to your life? Are we so accustomed to conforming, to group think, that we are unable to differentiate between the real thing and an imitation? And, in your work and life, are your solutions creative, or do you only do the “true and tried” methods?

Do you have the courage to take the road less traveled and provide the real thing? Or will you subscribe to the herd mentality and provide imitations? As a spectator, do you applaud imitations and hiss at the real thing, or do you embrace the real thing? Or have you been conforming too long and have become too comfortable? What are some ways that you can shake things up and zig when others zag?

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Photo Credit: Apture

Source of Fable: Page By Page Books