Everything starts with a story, always… everything in our life is a story… the story of our birth, the story of our life, the story of our family, the story of our successes, the story of our knowledge, and this morning, as the sun or the rain dances above the town, the student asks: ‘Master, what is knowledge? The man, or maybe it is a woman, who knows? The man, sitting at the bottom of some stairs, lets his eyes wander as he rests after his long morning walk in the forest. In his hands he holds a wooden stick. ‘Knowledge,’ he replies, ‘is this wooden stick.’ The student stares, ‘this wooden stick? I don’t understand…’ ‘It’s simple,’ adds the master, ‘when I left this morning, I did not know what I was looking for, and then I found this wooden stick, that I shaped and polished with my hands, before resting on it as I walked back. Without this wooden stick I may have lost my way in the forest, or at least I may have walked back much slower. Is this not knowledge? To be there to be polished, to be there to guide you and to be there to help you every day of your life?
Reference: Maxence Fermine, Olivier Besson, Sagesses et malices de Confucius, le roi sans royaume, Ed. Albin Michel, le baton, pg. 63, adaptation and translation, Florence Dambricourt.
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