Sometimes it happens in life that after reading a parable, you realize that you have found the answer to a question that has been tormenting you for a long time.
An old grandmother was sitting in the room. She was knitting. The knitting needles flashed very quickly in her small, wrinkled hands, despite the fact that she was not even looking at them. And the old woman smiled at some of her thoughts.
Then the door opened and a young girl entered the room. She sat down next to the old woman and pressed herself close to her.
- What’s my goodness, why are you frowning? - asked the grandmother and put her knitting aside. She hugged the girl and pressed her lips to her temple.
The girl took the old woman's hand and stroked it.
“Granny, tell me, why am I so unlucky in life?” I broke up with my fiancé and my work is not going well. Everything somehow doesn't work out that way. Eh, grandma? Why am I so unlucky?
The old woman grabbed the girl’s face with both hands and looked straight into her eyes, as if she was trying to look at something incomprehensible and mysterious there. Then she lowered her hands and said:
— I remember in kindergarten, you children played this game - you ran around chairs to the music, and as soon as the music ended, you had to take a chair. The secret was that there were always fewer chairs there than children running around them. And whoever did not have time was eliminated from the game. Do you remember?
“I remember we played this game at school too.” And what?
- Yes, the fact is that you are still playing this game in your life. You are constantly fighting with something, then you are fighting for someone or something. It turns out that you are not enjoying life, but are constantly struggling. Do you remember how they said before that all life is a struggle?
The old woman looked at the girl listening attentively and continued:
- I have been many years old, and I understood one thing very precisely.... Fighting is wasting your time, you know? Time is running out. We must live today and now and enjoy this miracle called life. And you keep running around these chairs, running... like a pony in a circle. But if you stop for a minute and look around, you will see a lot of chairs near the wall. And they are all free. You just need to leave the circle and take one of the chairs. Understand? You just need to learn to see opportunities.
She squinted, peering into the girl’s face, and added:
“There are a lot of opportunities around, you just need to get out of the circle.”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru