One day a man said to Nasreddin:
- I'm very poor. It is absolutely impossible to live like this. Do you think I should commit suicide? I have six children and a wife, I also have my widowed sister and elderly father and mother. Survival is becoming more and more difficult. Do you have any advice?
“You can do two things, and both of them will help,” Nasreddin answered. - One - start baking bread, because people have to eat to live, so you will never go wrong.
- And the other one? - asked the man.
- Start sewing shrouds for the dead, because if people are alive, they will die. This is also a good business. Both of these things are good - bread and shrouds.
A month later this man returned. He was completely sad and looked even more desperate.
- It looks like nothing will work out. I put everything I could scrape together into the business as you advised, but it seems everything is against me.
Nasreddin was surprised:
- How can this be? People need to eat bread while they are alive, and when they die, their relatives have to buy a shroud.
“You don’t understand,” the man answered. - In our village no one lives and no one dies. They are all just eking out an existence.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru