The Wise Donkey and the Salt
Panchatantra Stories · 1 min read
A merchant's donkey, loaded each day with heavy sacks of salt, had to cross a shallow stream on his route to market. One day he stumbled and fell into the water, and when he stood back up, his load felt wonderfully lighter — the salt had simply dissolved.
Delighted with his discovery, the donkey began "stumbling" into the stream on purpose every single day, always rising with a lighter load and an easier journey. The merchant, annoyed at losing salt but not yet understanding why, decided one day to load the donkey with sacks of raw cotton instead.
The donkey, expecting the same trick to work as always, deliberately toppled into the stream once more — but this time, the cotton soaked up the water and grew heavier than ever, and the poor, dripping donkey struggled the rest of the way to market under a load twice as hard to carry as before.
Moral of the story
A trick that worked once will not work the same way with a different problem — think fresh each time.