There was a boy that often felt uncertain about how to act the proper way. He wanted to be a good person, but did not always know the best way to be that good person. He thought that if he could only answer his three questions, he would always know what to do.
When is the best time to do things?
Who are the most important people?
What is the right thing to do?
We all struggle with these questions in one form or another.
The 1st – When is the best time to do things? We always seem to struggle with this question, juggling priorities, calendars filling up, not knowing what to do first, and when. It is not impossible that in trying to figure out when to do all the things that we need to do, the importance of the thing that we need to do is lost, the meaning of the experience of doing something replaced by the relief of checking it off our list once it is complete.
The 2nd – who are the most important people? We are constantly pulled this way and that by obligations to various people – to ourselves, to our families, to our friends, to our teachers, to our teams. Again, knowing who to give our attention to can at times be all but impossible.
The 3rd – what is the right thing to do? It is all about our priorities. How do we determine what is the right thing to do? Do we put ourselves first – as we often feel compelled to do – or do we put others before us? The answer drifts around somewhere in between. How do we figure out the right thing to do.
So this boy seeks the advice of his friends. And his friends give him all sorts of answers that just confuse him. And he got frustrated. So he hiked off into the woods to seek the advice of this old man of legendary wisdom named Leo. When he found Leo, this old guy was digging a garden. He walked up to him and asked his questions. Leo smiled and kept digging. After a minute, the boy offered to help, noticing that Leo was tired. He dug until the garden was finished. Then it began to rain. As they moved to shelter, the boy heard a cry for help. He ran deep into the woods and found a woman trapped under a fallen tree. He dragged the woman back to the shelter and sat with her, tending to her injuries. The woman came to and said, “Where am I, and where is my son?” Panicked, the boy ran back into the woods and found the woman’s baby lying in the woods, shivering. He scooped him up and brought him to his mother, saving his life. They all went to sleep, exhausted.
The next morning they all woke, the woman and her son moved along after offering many thanks and Leo told the boy how proud he was of the boy. The boy had captured a real sense of peace, but mentioned his frustration to Leo that his questions had still not been answered.
Leo responded, “But they have”
“If you hadn’t stayed to help dig my garden, you wouldn’t have heard the woman’s cry. So the most important time was the time you spent turning the soil. The most important person at that moment was me and the most important thing to do at that time was to help me with the garden.
Later, when the woman screamed, the most important time was the time you spent saving them, the most important people were the mother and her child, and the most important thing to do was to rescue them and nurse them back to health.”
He continued, “Remember then that there is only one most important time and that is now. The most important one is the one that you are with. And the most important thing to do is to do good for the one standing at your side.”
