The Mite, The Flea

Pedagogue and Pupil strode an ancient acropolis above a teeming city.
One evening the Pupil, dismayed at his childish writings after a long day's lessons, pounded his fist on his robed thigh and asked, "Master, do our lives even matter? Are we not insignificant?"
The Pedagogue smiled, his cheeks and forehead crinkling, as he walked. He stopped and bent down to stroke the head of a passing puppy, and brushed his hand under the dog's belly. Then he held his hand up to his Pupil's face, illuminated in a wall's torchlight.
"Look in my hand," the Pedagogue said. "What do you see?"
The Pupil looked down at his master's open hand. "Master, I see nothing in your hand."
"Look closer," the Pedagogue replied.
The Pupil's nose almost touched his master's open palm. "Master, there's nothing there!"
The Pedagogue replied, "Did you not regard a Mite, chewing on a fleck from the dog's skin -- and a Flea, poised to leap?"
"No, Master," the Pupil replied.
Then the Pedagogue extended his hand, touched his Pupil's arm briefly, and pointed up to the darkening sky. "Regard the Cosmos, my Pupil."
The Pupil looked up and stared at the stars -- but sullenly, just as doubtful of the world's significance to the cosmos as of his significance to the world.
"Agh!"
The Pupil jerked his head back down as something bit his arm. He peered at his skin in the torchlight, until he saw a tiny black speck -- the Flea, placed there by his Peripatetic mentor's touch -- digging into his skin.
The Pedagogue beamed, and said, "Now what do you see?"
Thus, like insects we seem insignificant -- until we puncture the skin of the World.

June 28, 2014, excerpt from The Parables of Reason © 2007-2014 (Chapter 1, "Reality's Acceptance"), by Frank H. Burton, Executive Director, The Circle of Reason.

Aphorism of the Week

Be careful not to believe everything you think. -- via Jeff Herring

Dedicated to the Rationalist Society of Pakistan.