Leading from the Middle

Caption: A la those Facebook postings, “if you can read this you are smarter than 95% of the general population” (of Singapore).

“ONE WINTER a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. ‘Oh,’ cried the Farmer with his last breath, ‘I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.’"

“The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.”

This fable brings to mind a professional associate with a reptilian reputation. A predator at conventions, he would use his position as the head of a major public library to entice young professionals into “friendships” with promises of employment. Fortunately, his binge drinking usually precluded any reciprocation on the part of whomever he was soliciting. Whenever a newly made “friend” followed up on the job offer with a visit to this director’s office, she or he would be met with a vacant stare and told to submit a resume to the personnel department.

*Source: AESOP'S FABLES By Aesop Translated by George Fyler Townsend (probably from this edition): “Three hundred and fifty Aesop's fables”. Chicago, Belford, Clarke & Co., 1886.
Available at Gutenberg.

@Copyright John Lubans 2014

 

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