Member-only story

Aesop was Right

S M Chen
5 min readOct 29, 2022

--

“No act of kindness, not matter how small, is ever wasted.”

  • Aesop (620–564 B.C.), Greek slave and fabulist (writer of “Aesop’s Fables”)

I’ve come to believe that the main reason we were put on Earth is to help others.

We could have been born in another country.

To different parents.

In a different family.

To less advantaged circumstances.

We might not have been born at all.

Millions of sperm swimming toward one egg.

What are the odds?

Or, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps born as a dog or cat.

Or insect.

Some believe the ant we see scurrying about on the sidewalk is somebody’s uncle, perhaps come back in a different life form.

I’m not sure about that, but, in case that person is right, I might want to hedge my bets.

I’m now careful how I treat ants.

I no longer terminate them with extreme prejudice because I can, because I’m larger.

Lemuel Gulliver (of the 1726 “Gulliver’s Travels” by satirist Jonathan Swift) was lucky, when he landed in the kingdom of Brobdingneg, that the country’s citizens were benign.

Book cover

--

--

Responses (1)