Meaning of life (continued) - Bear & Deer

This time the young man walked into a long narrow valley. He saw a bear and a deer at a spring. They were drinking water from a small pool. The young man was thirsty.

He was about to shout at the bear and the deer and ask for water when something stopped him. “Is this strange? - A bear and a deer drinking together?”, he thought. After a while, he decided to speak. “May I take a drink?” he asked.

The bear and the deer looked up and said “There is plenty of water. There is no scarcity. The water belongs to us all.” After having drunk, the young man sat down to rest and the bear and the deer came to rest with him.

The young man asked if they were friends. “No, we are not friends but we learn from each other”, said the bear. And the deer continued “One day the bear and I came to the spring at the same time.

We were both thirsty and had a violent fight. After the fight both of us were hurting and bloody. No one was happy.” The bear continued “We realized that it seemed better not to fight; and to share the water of the spring”.

The young man smiled and laid on the grass for a rest. And the wind whispered into his ears: “It is wrong to fight when both want the same thing and there is enough for both”. The man rested for a while and then left the deer and the bear sleeping in the warm sunlight. He had received his meaningful lesson of life.