Long long time ago, there was a young man who always complain about his stressful life. He wanted to get rid of the entire burden, thus he went to a philosopher who stayed at the bottom of the hill and hoped that the wise man could help him.
After the philosopher listened to his story, he gave the young man a basket and said: “Take this basket and walk up to the hill. But for every step that you take, you need to pick up something and put it into the basket. By the time you reach the summit, you will know the answer.” So the young man immediately began his journey with great passion of searching the answer.
At the beginning, the young man was very enthusiastic and energetic. He picked up everything that he thought was the best or the most beautiful thing into his basket. Every time he put something inside, he felt very fulfilling because he thought he owned the world’s most beautiful ornament. So the young man finished one third of the journey with laughter and joy.
However, the basket was getting heavier because the things that he collected had increased gradually, so as the burden that he felt on his shoulder. But this young man was very determined to finish the journey, he kept on encouraged himself that the destination was getting nearer and nearer…
Hence the next one third of the journey was getting harder and more torturous. At this time, he didn’t really care what was beautiful or what was precious. In order not to let the basket becoming heavier, he only chose things that were very tiny in size, or things that were needy. He did that because he deeply believed that sacrifices were inevitable if he wanted to finish the journey. But he also knew that even putting the lightest thing on earth would not reduce the weight of the basket, in fact the weight would increased till he couldn’t bear with it. Nevertheless the young man hadn’t given it up yet, he still picked up the weighty basket and headed to his destination.
Now the young man had reached the final one third of the journey. He knew the journey would end soon. At this time, he didn’t give a damn to things that were beautiful or light, he was totally fed up with all these material. What he would pick up was objects that were within his reach, and regard them as tokens of his journey. The rest he would just left it behind.
Finally he saw the philosopher standing at the summit, he took a breath and marched toward the ending. Once he touched the hand of the philosopher, he said: “I don’t really know the answer, but now, I don’t need it anymore”.
The End…
Story Review: In the story, the journey was divided into 3 parts, and each part represents the 3 stages of life, which are youth, middle age and old age. In our youth time, we are innocent and like to choose things that are gorgeous in our heart. With no pressure and worries, we just pick it up. Then when we come to middle age, we will start picking up things that are useful or needy because we know that we can’t behave as naïve as we were before, and there are lots of responsibilities on our shoulder that we can’t ignore. And finally in old age, we will pick up and appreciate things that are being abandoned by most of the people.
That’s life and that are the stages we need to go through. Life is not simple, but we can make it interesting!
