Walking home one wonderful morning, Nasrudin thought that it would be a good idea to take a short cut through the woods. ‘Why’, he asked himself, ‘should I plod along a dusty road when I could be communing with nature, listening to the birds and looking at the flowers? This is indeed a day of days; a day for fortunate pursuits!’
So saying, he launched himself into the greenery. He had not gone very far, however, when he fell into a pit, where he lay reflecting.
‘It is not such a fortunate day, after all,’ he meditated; ‘in fact it is just as well that I took this short cut. If things like this can happen in a beautiful setting like this, what might not have befallen me on that nasty highway?’
The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin Idries Shah, Octagon Press