Two Parables

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     Two stories illustrate how personal growth affects us. In the first, an eagle egg turns up in a barnyard nest and is incubated by a hen. It hatches. The little eaglet follows his fellow chicks, scratching in the yard for insects, pecking at corn, raised to adulthood under the influences of hen and rooster. He spies an eagle soaring above and feels envy. “What is that?” he asks.

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     “That is an eagle,” says the rooster. “He belongs to the sky. We are chickens; we belong to the earth.” The eagle nods. It continues scratching and pecking, occasionally spreading its wings, but it remains forever earthbound, at times looking upward.

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     In the second, a tadpole and a minnow become friends in their pond, swimming and exploring together. The tadpole begins to grow legs; his tail shortens. Finally, he becomes a frog and climbs onto the grassy bank. The minnow grows into an adult fish. One day the frog returns to the pond. “I’ve missed you,” says the fish, “where have you been?”

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     “I’ve been into the world outside the pond,” says the frog, “and seen wondrous things.” He describes what he’s seen. The fish wants to see these things and flops out onto the bank. She lies there, gasping, unable to breathe. The frog pushes her back into the pond. “I’m a frog,” he says, “and I can live here—but you’re a fish, and you cannot.”

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     The fish breathes deeply, savoring the oxygen passing through her gills, luxuriating in the cool pond with sunlight winnowing down in dancing patterns. “You are right,” she tells the frog. “And this is the most beautiful world.”

“Frogs is frogs,” he says. “Fish is fish,” she replies.

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     Sometimes we accept who we become, like the fish. Sometimes we become whom we accept, like the eagle. And sometimes, like me, we just remain confounded.

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Ron Wetherington (with a nod to Leo Lionni)