The Ax Thief

As I flew back to France, I was reading Lie Yukou:

Once upon a time, a man had a well-made ax which he prized. One day, he could not find his ax in his house and so suspected his neighbor’s son of stealing it.

To find evidence, he began to observe the boy. In the man’s eyes, the way the boy walked, the expression on his face, the manner of his speech – in fact everything about his appearance and behavior seemed to suggest that he was the ax thief.

But just before the man was going to confront the boy, he retrieved his ax while digging in a valley. Then when he saw the boy again, nothing about his behavior nor appearance looked like telling that he had stolen the ax.

Keeping an open mind and seeing things as they are and not how we want them to be is something we try very hard to do.