The Traveler and the Two Roads

A merchant traveling to a distant city came to a fork in the road: one path was shorter but ran through dense, unfamiliar forest, while the other was longer but well-traveled and safe. An old woman resting nearby warned him that bandits had recently been spotted on the shorter forest path, and urged him to take the longer route despite the delay.

The merchant, confident in his own judgment and impatient to arrive quickly, dismissed her warning as an old woman's needless fear and took the shorter path anyway, reasoning that bandits couldn't possibly be lurking on every single day.

Deep in the forest, he was indeed stopped by bandits, who took everything he carried and left him stranded, forced to walk the rest of the way with nothing. Reaching the city battered and empty-handed, far later than the longer, safer road would ever have made him, he understood too late that the old woman's warning had cost him nothing to heed, while ignoring it had cost him everything he'd carried.