“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci. (Adopted by Steve Jobs.)
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A Bald Man sat down to rest after work on a hot summer’s day.
A Fly kept buzzing about his bald head, stinging him from time to time.
Irritated and annoyed, the Man aimed a blow at this little enemy, but, in trying to hit the Fly, continued to smack his own head instead, leaving him now stung by the Fly and injured by his own hand.
Moral of the Story: Refusing to endure the lesser injury causes the greater injury. A miserable man is his own best punishment.
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Introduction – The Essential Aesop – Epilogue
Related Articles: Bearing Insults – No. 7. The Bear and the Bees – The Essential Aesop™; Dilemmas, and The Devil We Know – No. 80. The Fox, Mosquito and Hedgehog – The Essential Aesop™; Salt, Wounds, and the Most Unkindest Cuts of All; Consider the Source. No. 22. The Lion and the Ass – The Essential Aesop™
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Why We Loved It: This is a scene right out of The Three Stooges, except perhaps Curly would be holding a wrench while he hits himself on the head to kill that little fly.
Aesop, a Western philosopher, meets Eastern philosophy Karma, not so much regarding the “what goes around” usage, but more of the failure to endure a small pain only brings more of it. This is a corollary to the lesson of Salt, Wounds, and the Most Unkindest Cuts of All. The weaker the constitution of the mind, the more easily it is infected.
These fables intersect on many themes, but wisdom—a function of prediction—is a clarity of understanding the probability of how trying to fix one little problem is likely to bring larger ones.
Compare a fool and a wise master. On the one hand, a fool is bothered by everything, and as such, runs around like a chicken with his head cut off bothered, abrased and unfocused. On the other hand, a master with sufficient capability might flip a focused hand like a lizard’s tongue and capture the fly, or the wise master would take no notice of the fly. But, either way, the wise master will not act in a manner that is the cause for the greater negative condition. This judgment is the lesson we learned from Aesop in No. 22. The Lion and the Ass – The Essential Aesop™—the Lion simply ignores the Ass.
A miserable man is his own best punishment.
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© 2013 Arnold Zegarelli and Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn. Arnold Zegarelli can be contacted through Facebook.
http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/self-inflicted-misery-61-bald-man-fly-essential-zegarelli-esq-/
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