The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs
A MAN and his Wife had the good fortune to possess a Goose which laid a Golden Egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once. But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose. Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.
Original moral: Much wants more and loses all.
Mocker's moral: Quoth I, "The love of money is the root of all evil." The Man and his Wife were the embodiment of evil, and they received their just deserts. (No, I don't mean desserts.) So, if you have a Goose that lays Golden Eggs, I will kill it, because you will just be corrupted by it anyway.
Mockee's moral: The Man and his Wife with a Goose that lays Golden Eggs can have Fabergé decorate their eggs, which will give them a greater financial net worth. They can then auction these eggs at Sotheby's, being sure to donate some of their profits to a worthy cause, which increases their personal social standing and spiritual net worth. That's what I will do when I get a Goose that lays Golden Eggs, someday.
Victim's moral: That Man and his Wife should just remember how lucky they were to have ever had a Goose that lay Golden Eggs. I sure never had a Goose like that, and probably never will.
Critic's moral: Why the hell would anyone imagine that a Goose that was made of pure gold could actually lay eggs? That's moronic. It's like imagining that real geese are actually made of goose eggs when you cut them open.
Pacifists moral: This just goes to show that you should treat all of God's animals with respect. The Goose
was made of gold, until they cruelly cut it down in the prime of its life.
Modern moral: We can be greedy. So, what to do when we find ourselves wondering whether we can increase the rate of our prosperity by trying to liquidate an asset?
- Try to liquidate your assets for an immediate gain (AEsop: you will wind up with a lot less than if you kept it)
- Decry greed loudly and proudly (note: you might still hoard your own stash while doing this)
- Don't liquidate: leverage your assets to increase your net worth (or, try to get more money than other people with similar assets; i.e., be greedier)
- Instead of being greedy, have you tried just impotent coveting (also called wishful thinking)? It's a great way to feel depressed, fast!
- Change the subject.
- Be greedy for spiritual assets by critizing the greed of possessions (capital assets)
I should probably point out here that the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs is often interpreted to mean some kind of financial or capital asset, or, as is more frequently found in ManagerWeaselSpeak, access to a resource (such as the people who work for you). I don't limit myself to this interpretation.
I interpret the Goose in this story to represent any thing that is valuable to us that we believe we can change and grow through an act of will, and more specifically, that we can use to put ourselves above others. For example, if you value your honesty, and you can demonstrate to other people that you are more honest than your neighbor by calling attention to a lie made by your neighbor, then you are showing greed for public acclaim, or spiritual righteousness, etc.
It is almost always greed that makes us want to assess ourselves against other people in any way, whether we base our assessment on finances, intelligence, style, strength, spirituality,
street cred, or what-have-you. It does not matter whether we wind up ahead in our assessment, or woefully lacking. Just the act of comparing ourselves against others is, at its core, begun from greed.
Greed is something that naturally occurs to us as infants and children. Another child has a toy in her hand, and I don't have that toy, nor do I have the big smile on my face that she has as she plays with the toy. So... I can either take the toy from her, or feel sorry for myself that I don't have the toy, or try to put a bigger smile on my face so as to prove that I didn't really want that dumb toy. I get older, and I just learn more sophisticated ways of doing the same thing. Or, I learn to live with my greed and find ways to manage it.
So, having greed is natural. "Being greedy" is just having unmanaged greed. (Remember, I'm not just talking about material or power assets.)
I recognize my greed as the reason I compare myself to somebody else, for any reason, at any time. The only time when I can effectively make my greed disappear is when I look only within myself to determine whether I have done my best to be or have or do a thing, without basing my standard for "best" on anyone else's accomplishment, but only on what I believe myself to be capable.
That said, I still find that I compare myself to others. Sometimes I choose this deliberately, but I try to be careful how I do it. The best reason for comparing myself against someone else is to challenge my own beliefs about what is or could be my "best." However, I try to quickly take "ownership" of that best as my new standard for what I could achieve (after I've decided that I really could do better than what I had been assuming to be my best). I avoid trying to hit the ever-moving target of just doing better than my competition.
So ... what would I do with a Goose that lays Golden Eggs? Feed the damn thing good Goose Chow, and be smart with the Eggs, but remember it's just a dumb Goose. If I really want to be rich (in spiritual, financial, emotional ways, etc.), then I better learn to start laying Golden Eggs myself. They will probably be really, really tiny Golden Eggs at first, but I bet with practice, they will get bigger. In plain English, I just mean that I would learn how to be an asset to the world in every sense of the word. I would be the best friend I could be, the best investor I could be, the best father I could be, the best teacher I could be, the best humorist I could be, etc.
