A little mouse once dreamed of the future. He was a smart little mouse and sought out the elderly mice of his community to benefit from their wisdom.
The elderly mice spoke of the past. They pondered the future. They reflected on the friends they had enjoyed during their lives. And remembered the lessons learned – sometimes at great cost.
Among the tidbits the little mouse picked up was knowledge of strange creatures that lived far away in the big city. These beasts had never strayed into the little mouse’s part of the country. In fact, few of the elderly mice had ever seen these horrid beings – though all had heard of them. The man people, the wise ones whispered in hushed tones, called them “cats.”
After listening carefully and learning from his elders, he decided to make a plan, having learned that a plan would help make his dreams come true. He made plans for the future of both himself and then of his growing family. He was confident that by careful planning, he could help the future unfold as he dreamed it. He briefly contemplated including plans to deal with the cats of the far off city but rejected those thoughts. They had, after all, never been seen in his part of the country and it seemed foolish to spend time planning for something so unlikely to happen.
After many days of thought and after much preparation, the little mouse’s plans were complete. He documented them carefully and bound them in a beautiful leather binder. He carefully put the binder with his plans on the shelf. He, his children and grandchildren admired the binder almost every day as they looked forward to the day the little mouse’s plan would be fully realized.
One day a famine came upon the land. The cats – monsters they really were – roamed far from their normal hunting grounds. The little mouse continued to gaze with admiration at the plans he had worked so hard to create. But even as rumors spoke of cats being seen closer and closer to his humble country home, he never took the plans down to consider if they needed to be changed.
One day the cats, for the first time in memory, did come to his part of the country. Because the little mouse’s plans had not changed, he was not prepared for this new reality. His plans – though carefully and wisely prepared – could not withstand the reality of a changing world over which he had little, if any, control.
Is there a moral to this story? A moral, perhaps, that you might understand as you contemplate your plans so well crafted – in the past.
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