A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion
says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”
Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”
I remember reading this as a child. It stuck with me all these years and I think from time to time about how it applies to my life. Can I change my nature? What even is my nature? How does medication change who I am and how I behave?
I think of the scorpion as the strangers I meet that say “Trust me, I’m honest”
(yeah, and if they really were, they wouldn’t have to tell me, now would they?)
A Wolf had been gorging on an animal he had killed, when suddenly a small bone in the meat stuck in his throat and he could not swallow it. He soon felt terrible pain in his throat, and ran up and down groaning and groaning and seeking for something to
relieve the pain. He tried to induce every one he met to remove the bone. “I would give anything,” said he, “if you would take it out.” At last the Crane agreed to try, and told the Wolf to lie on his side and open his jaws as wide as he could. Then the Crane put its long neck down the Wolf’s throat, and with its beak loosened the bone, till at last it got it out.
“Will you kindly give me the reward you promised?” said the Crane.
The Wolf grinned and showed his teeth and said: “Be content. You have put your head inside a Wolf’s mouth and taken it out again in safety; that ought to be reward enough for you.”
Moral of Aesops Fable: Gratitude and greed go not together
BUT…it could just as easily have the same moral as the “Scorpion and the Frog”, don’t you think?
