It’s a part of human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own mistakes, or to blame someone else for our mistakes. The story that follows is one of my favourites from Paulo Coelho’s Like The Flowing River...
A messenger was sent on an urgent mission to a distant city. He saddled up his horse and set off at a gallop. After passing several inns, where animals like him were normally fed, the horse thought: “we are not stopping to eat at any stable, which means that I am being treated not like a horse, but like a human being. Like all other men, I will eat in the next big city we reach”.
But the big cities all passed by one after the other, and his rider continued on his way. He horse began to think “Perhaps I haven’t been changed into a human being, but into an angel, because angels have no need to eat”.
Finally they reached their destination and the animal was led to the stable, where he greedily devoured the hay he found there.
“Why believe that things have changed simply because they do not happen quite as expected”? he said to himself. “I am not a man or an angel. I’m simply a hungry horse”
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