Once upon a time Goldilocks was
walking along the wide path through the forest, on her way to the house of the Three
Bears. It was about six months or so after she had met them for the first time
and they had all become great friends. Daddy Bear had emailed Goldilocks to ask
if she could look after Baby Bear for a couple of hours whilst he and Mummy
Bear went down to the Mall to buy Mummy Bear a special anniversary present.
Goldilocks was only too pleased
to help out, so she had set off bright and early on a lovely summer’s morning
to walk the two miles through the forest. She had probably gone about half way
when she came upon a hare, who was walking in the same direction as she was,
though somewhat slowly.
“Good Morning Mr Hare,” said
Goldilocks, because she had been brought up properly and was always polite.
“Good Morning to you young lady,”
replied the Hare, and the two began quite naturally to walk side by side,
commenting on the weather, the greenness of the trees and the warmth of the Sun
as it dropped its dappled light through the canopy.
After a few minutes Goldilocks
was quiet for a moment but then said, “Mr Hare, I wonder if you would mind if I
asked you a question?”
“Not at all”, replied the Hare. “Go
ahead.”
“Could it be,” ventured
Goldilocks, “that you are the same hare that once famously competed in a race
with a tortoise – and lost?”
The hare flushed a little but
replied, “I have to admit young lady that I am indeed that somewhat foolish
hare, though in my defence I have to say that things have altered considerably
since that event, which was several years ago.”
“How so?” Goldilocks quizzed,
because although she was well brought up she was still naturally curious and of
course quite young.
The hare stopped by a huge tree
that had fallen in the winter gales and he rested against its trunk. Goldilocks
sat beside him. “After that unfortunate experience, I began to realise that
perhaps I didn’t know enough about life and that the time was right for me to
seek out some education. As a result I enrolled in college and eventually
achieved a degree and a certificate – not to mention a cap and a gown. Modesty
forbids me from suggesting that I am now significantly wiser than I was back in
those days,” he ventured, “but I don’t think that if the same race was run
today, I would be likely to lose. In fact……” he began.
“Go on,” said Goldilocks, who was
intrigued to know what was going through the hare’s mind.
“Well it has occurred to me that
I may be able to prove how much I have changed thanks to my education. Do you
like paradoxes young lady?”
“Indeed I do,” she replied,
though in all honesty she wasn’t entirely sure what a paradox was.
“Then let’s have another race –
this bright and beautiful morning. May I ask where you are going?”
“Certainly,” she replied. “I’m
going to the cottage of the Three Bears, to look after Baby Bear.”
“In that case,” said the hare,
you and I will have a race to the house of the Three Bears, but with a twist.”
He twitched his whiskers. “I will not only beat you in the race, but I will
also finish after you. How about that?”
Goldilocks was puzzled. “I don’t
see how that could be possible,” she admitted, but I should like to see it all
the same. When shall we begin?”
“Well now is as good as any time
I should think,” said the hare, and bounded off up the path.
A hare is a hare after all, and a
little girl is a little girl, so you can imagine it was difficult for
Goldilocks to keep up; in fact it wasn’t long before the hare had disappeared
into the distance.
Puffing and panting, Goldilocks
eventually arrived at the front door of the Three Bear’s cottage. Just as she
arrived, Daddy Bear opened the door.
“Good morning Goldilocks,” said
Daddy Bear with a smile. “You are very prompt, but you seem to be quite out of
breath.”
“Indeed I am Daddy Bear,” she
spluttered, “but tell me please, has Mr Hare passed this way?”
“As a matter of fact I saw him
only about five minutes ago. He said something quite curious – now what was it?
Ah yes, he said, "please tell the young lady I fulfilled the first part of my
promise", though I’m sure I don’t know what he meant.”
Just as Daddy Bear finished
speaking there was a commotion from behind and looking round they saw the hare,
about a hundred feet away, pounding up the path that Goldilocks had just
trodden. He staggered to a halt beside the cottage and after catching his
breath he said: “And that’s the second part of my promise, because as you can
see, I arrived here after you.”
“That’s remarkable,” offered
Goldilocks, but you really must tell me Mr Hare how you managed such a thing.
Was it by magic?”
“Alas,” said the hare, “I am no
magician, but rather a child of the Enlightenment and for that reason I will
tell you how I achieved this amazing paradox.
Being a hare, it wasn’t too
difficult for me to lose you on the path, so you were nowhere to be seen when I
arrived here the first time. Mr Bear was fortunately in the front garden, so I
asked him to be sure to tell you that I had kept the first part of my promise.
The second part of my strategy relied on the fact that you seemed to be a good
girl, and I estimated that you would always do what your mother told you. Is
that correct?”
“Oh yes,” said Goldilocks,
nodding vigorously.
“And I also thought it very
likely that your mother would have told you that when you walk through the
forest, you should always stick to the wide and well trodden path, for fear of
wild animals?” He nodded in the direction of Daddy Bear, “Begging your pardon
Sir?”
“That’s very true,” admitted
Goldilocks, “I never stray from the path. Two of my friends, Hansel and Gretel
once did that and they were very nearly eaten by a wicked witch.”
“Just so,” said the hare. “And
that being the case I thought it unlikely you would know about the much smaller
path, over there beyond the trees. It follows the same line as this wide path
and actually joins it about half a mile back in the direction from which we
came. All I had to do, after alerting Daddy Bear, was to take that path in the
opposite direction. By the time it merged with the big path, you had already
passed, so I merely followed you and arrived behind you, as I had suggested I
would. Of course you couldn’t see me going back because the trees hid me from
you.”
Of course this is just a silly
story but can we take anything from it? Perhaps we can. Maybe we can say:
·
Sometimes
we don’t see what might otherwise be quite obvious, because the trees get in
the way.
·
Not
necessarily everything keeps going in the same direction.
·
There
might be times when instead of the end justifying the means, the means are
actually a consequence of the ends.
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