Basket of Problems

There goes an old fable which talks about how everyone has their own set of problems and how it is wrong to go about thinking – “I have so many problems…look at them…they are so happy, have everything, etc.” Here goes the story. There was once a kingdom with people from all walks of life. It so happened that each one of them was so troubled with their woes, cribbing that other people were so lucky & happy that God decided to make them an offer. It went like this- “Each individual, from the poorest poor to the king, can write up each of his problems on small paper sheets, put them in a basket with his name and hang it in the kingdom’s biggest temple by midnight. Next day morning anyone can exchange their basket for anyone else’s basket and the problems will be exchanged by noon”. Almost everyone was happy because as far as they were concerned, no one could have had the problems that they face. The night came and everyone hung their baskets in the temple. In the morning when they went for the exchange, each one of them came back with their own basket. Each of the baskets turned out to be of the same size and no one wanted to bear with someone else’s troubles.

The moral of the story is that everyone in this world has their own basket of problems. If we do not see it in other people’s eyes, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have any. How often do we look at someone and think, he/she is so lucky….has money, nice job, good looking….so lucky in life? One might not want to believe, but it happens and it’s human to have that feeling. We choose to see only the fairer side of the coin for others and ignore/ refuse to see the other side….tip of the ice berg, as they say. Be it the person sitting on a sidewalk, the one sitting on a machine gun post on the border, or the one presiding the meeting of all CEOs. The balance of nature is always maintained; size of the basket remains the same, only the contents vary.