Are You The Sun or The Wind?

“Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning.  If we don’t it may drench itself out in sorrow” Joan Baez, American Folksinger, Songwriter and Civil Rights Activist.  1941 – 

‘Once upon a time the wind and the sun challenged one another to a competition. They spotted a man walking down the road wearing a heavy overcoat. The winner, they decided would be whichever one of them could get him to take his coat off quickest. The wind went first, it blew and it blew and it blew but he only clutched it more tightly to himself.

The wind attempts to strip the traveler of his cloak,

While the wind rested, the sun gently sent his beams out upon the traveler. The sun merely quietly shone upon the man’s head and back until he became so warm that he took off his coat and headed for a shade tree nearby.’

The sun strips the traveler of his cloak

This classic Aesop fable tells us we can accomplish far more with warmth, support and consistent kindness, than we can through conflict, confrontation and assertive intervention. You may be under pressure now, but you have more time than you think. It’s still perfectly possible to go gently.

So what will you be today – the sun or the wind?

More than 200 fables are attributed to  Aesop, a slave and story-teller supposed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE.  The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Aesop – The Lion and the Mouse.

The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.  Aesop – The Tree and The Reed.

Note – Illustrations of the fable  by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology. Wikipedia