I am adding Fable Five here to the pieces uploaded in previous posts (see below). Called “The Fisherman who Stopped Bailing,” it contrasts two different responses to life’s demands – give yourself over to a life of bailing your own leaky boat until your energy runs out, or risk trusting others to co-operate with you in building a larger vessel, with better chance of weathering the storms.
Fable Five belongs in a series called “Fables and Reflections” which consists of sixteen pieces in all.
Each piece takes just a few minutes to read. I am uploading them one at a time, every three weeks or so. The idea behind this approach is that people running all day just to keep up, are more likely to read them in short doses and at intervals.
But for those who prefer them all at once, here is a link to the sixteen together.
The series is a set of essays written after a working life spent in the care services, primarily in the field of mental health. It thus records what I learned and saw during all that time deployed at one of Society’s many fault-lines dividing Have from Have-not, Them from Us, I from Other. In a sense you can say that, in exploring the constituents of community here, and at this time of strain and fragmentation, frantic materialism and crude zealotry, the series asks and discusses what are the binding and redemptive skills of true human connection, the skills of love, the skills of being human.
If anyone finds value or virtue in these Fables and Reflections, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply pass on this blog address, or, alternatively, I am happy to e-mail them individually as attachments to people who would find that easier. I am already doing that for some people. I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail. If that is your preference, just send me your address.
PS. Well done and thank-you, Mr President. Well done and thank-you, America.