One day I met a well-fed hungry man and asked:
- Brother, what happened to you?
“I haven’t eaten for a whole week,” the man answered.
- Tell me, how did you get to this point?
“I was so stupid that I wanted to get rich playing cards, but I lost everything,” he said sadly.
The well-fed man was an educated man and began to explain to the hungry man about the evils of gambling. The poor man obediently listened to his words, sadly nodding his head, hoping that his expectations would not be in vain.
“I think you realized that you behaved incorrectly,” said the well-fed one after an hour of instruction.
Then someone’s wise idea came to his mind that the best help is to give a person a fishing rod and teach him to fish than to feed him every day. So he did - he went and bought the most expensive fishing rod and began to teach the poor fellow to fish. By evening they had not caught anything, and the poor man died of hunger.
The educated man was so inspired by the discovery that helping others was so pleasant that he began to call all the poor people to that pond to read sermons to them and teach them how to fish. But few people went to study with him, because most knew that expecting even a crust of bread from him was like catching fish in a pond in which there was never any.
And the educated man sat upset and could not understand why no one listened to him.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru