Long ago, in a little village there was a moss green pond. No one knew how it came to be, or anything about it except for the fact that it was just there. It looked deceptively shallow even though it was quite deep. One day, a proud king came to the village after losing his way on his hunting mission. The villagers were in awe as they’d never had a royal visitor, so they provided him all that he needed and let him use the pond for his bath. He thought that the pond was shallow and was too proud to tell the villagers he couldn’t swim.
The king drowned. Unfortunately none of the villagers were around to help him. When the villagers realized what happened, they grieved his death for days. A group of villagers later recovered his body from the water and buried him near the pond itself. While burying him, they realized how pride and ignorance could affect their lives and they started working cleverly and rationally. Due to this realization, the group of villagers achieved a lot of success. The other villagers however credited their success to the pond and considered it to be a source of magic.
They believed that the king’s hopes and dreams had merged with its waters and would grant great success to those who swam in it. They decided to cover the pond so none of the rainwater could destroy its magic. However, people were allowed to come and swim in it when it wasn’t raining. The people who swam in it started to believe that they had imbibed the magical powers of the pond and thus started functioning rationally, achieving great success in their work.
However, the foolish people of the village didn’t realize that without the rain entering the pond, it would soon dry out and so it did. When they found out, they thought it was because its magic was running out and they mourned for a long time. But they never realized that the pond was ultimately just an ordinary mossy green pond.
Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
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