Mindset story: Consequences of the battle between the snake and a saw

There was once a very successful and wise carpenter. Everyone in the village turned to him for advice about building and repairing a house or even their own lives and their relationships. You see the carpenter had a tough life. Growing up he was left on his own to care for himself and his brother and sister. So from a very young age this boy, now a man had to make many choices without any guidance or support and he had to learn about the consequences of those actions on his own “skin”. Those consequences made him very angry and many times he felt the world wasn’t fair. With every unfair experience he had, he then learned that holding on to a grudge or hate only hurt him more. So he developed a positive mindset and always looked for solutions instead of problems. And people loved him and his advice because of it.

One night a snake, looking for food, entered the carpenter’s workshop. The carpenter, who was despite his wisdom a rather untidy man, had left several of his tools lying on the floor. One of them was a saw. As the snake went round and round the shop, it climbed over the saw, which gave it a little cut. At once, thinking that the saw was attacking it, the snake turned around and bit it so hard that its mouth started to bleed. This made the snake even angrier. So the snake decided to roll around the saw as if wanting to suffocate it with its whole body. As the snake squeezed the saw the snake got hurt even more. Because of that, the snake thought it had to attack harder so it squeezed even more. This went on until one of them finally lost the battle.

The next morning when the carpenter entered his workshop he was surprised to find a dead snake cut in half and a bloody saw. As he saw the unfortunate fate of the snake he thought to himself “This could have happened to me if I wouldn’t learn from my actions and the consequences of those actions.”