The Argument Over the Donkey's Shadow

A traveler, hiring a donkey along with its driver for a long journey across a scorching plain, stopped at midday when the heat became unbearable and moved to rest in the narrow strip of shade cast by the donkey's body, the only shade available anywhere on the exposed road.

The driver objected immediately, insisting that the traveler had only paid to hire the donkey itself for riding and carrying goods, not the shade it happened to cast, and that the shade therefore remained his own to use as the actual owner of the animal. The traveler disagreed heatedly, arguing that hiring the donkey for the full day surely included whatever incidental benefits came with it, shade included, and refused to move.

The argument escalated quickly into a full shouting match, both men growing red-faced and furious over a strip of shade barely wide enough for one person to sit in comfortably, each utterly convinced of his own rightful claim to it. In the heat of their dispute, neither noticed the donkey himself growing restless and stepping away from where he'd been standing, wandering off entirely unnoticed toward a nearby patch of grass — taking the contested shade with him and leaving both furious men arguing bitterly over a strip of shadow that no longer existed anywhere at all. Their fight over a small, incidental benefit had cost them their attention on the only thing that actually mattered.