A lesson from a story

The following translation of a story from a church weekly (June 13), which can be comparable to the country's present situation, may, hopefully, serve as a guiding lesson for us.

Two young cows were allowed to graze in a meadow; only those two cows were tied together with a rope. Afterward, the owner of the cows brought two large water jars and put them rather far from each other so that the two cows did not fight for water when they wanted to drink. However, as soon as the farmer left, a violent struggle took place. Each cow tried to reach its own jar but the rope that tied them together was not long enough to reach their respective jars. So the two cows continued to pull and drag each other, like a tug-of-war game, and both cows got angry with each other. Their eyes became red with anger and their bodies were wet from sweating. Finally the two cows, being extremely exhausted, dropped down on to the ground, suffering all the more from thirst.

As their condition continued to worsen, one of the cows said to its peer: We've fought for something which is not worth fighting for and neither of us got a drop of water. Why don't we cooperate to get the water. Now let's drink from my jar and if we are still thirsty, we can drink the water in your jar. That was what exactly they did. The result was indeed amazing: they both drank to their hearts' content.

It is clear that this story may serve as an appropriate example for us all to acknowledge the need for cooperation and a concerted effort to reach a common goal, instead of continuously fighting and trying to annihilate each other out of egoistic hearts. We should learn to serve and pay attention to other people based on the spirit of togetherness. So it is necessary for the political elite to work together in order to create a climate conducive for the attainment of a peaceful solution to our common problems i.e. an immediate end to the political and economic crisis.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta