Aesop's Wisdom Series #3: The Gnat & the Bull
The third entry in the Aesop's Wisdom short series.
The Fable: The Gnat & the Bull
A Gnat flew over the meadow with much buzzing for so small a creature and settled on the tip of one of the horns of a Bull. After he had rested a short time, he made ready to fly away. But before he left he begged the Bull's pardon for having used his horn for a resting place.
"You must be very glad to have me go now," he said.
"It's all the same to me," replied the Bull. "I did not even know you were there."
The Moral: We are often of greater importance in our own eyes than in the eyes of our neighbor. The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
Fable Analysis
The truth is that nobody thinks about ourselves as much as we do, which can be both a good and bad thing. When we have successes or shortcomings, we often tend to overestimate how much others are holding onto them.
This encounter is largely inconsequential, but it highlights the importance of both humility and self-awareness (as we’re starting to see, these are common themes with Aesop’s work). The gnat appears to hold a belief that the bull is concerned with its presence, yet the bull, occupied in whatever else it was doing, doesn’t even recognize that the gnat is there until the gnat finally calls it out before flying away.
Both the highest highs and lowest lows we experience are never as significant as they seem, especially in the eyes of the rest of the world. While this can be a hard pill to swallow, it also allows us to move through life with the grace and humility necessary to make it an enjoyable experience. We’re all free to live in a way that suits us best, and we shouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the judgments of others; after all, they’re likely not thinking about us nearly as much as we believe they are. In the grand scheme of the universe, we are all rather small and insignificant.
Of course, the promotional section!
Jared