A man sought out a respected old sage and said, “O wise one, I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.”
The sage led the man to two doors.
He opened one of the doors, and the man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water.
The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms. Each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The wise man said, “You have seen hell.”
They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons strapped to their arms, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The man said, “I don’t understand!”
“It is simple,” said his venerable guide. “It requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves”
[Interesting fact: This parable appears in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Japanese and Chinese folk legends. Food for thought . . . (pun intended).]
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I used this in management training as an exercise. I asked them to create other spoon scenarios.
Here is a couple of their ideas: Broken spoons and glue that would fix one other unknown person’s spoon, a variation was the person knew whose glue they needed, could and couldn’t ask directly. Another was short spoons and extenders that did not fit their spoon; variations were enough extenders for one spoon which was shared. Too small spoons to eat enough and others with too big of spoons to fit into the kettle, each could only use one spoon at a time.
They had many more, each class’ context was unique.
I know who provided the soup that I ate and did not hunger again.