강과 논쟁한 소녀

The Argument Begins

Every evening a girl named Mira climbed down to the river. She went there to argue about how a whole life should be spent. Mira believed anything worth having must be seized, forced, and defended against a stubborn world. The river was ancient and unhurried, and it calmly disagreed with her. It answered in a low and patient voice of moving water. "You waste yourself," Mira said. "You bend around every stone in your path." The current only laughed, as a river laughs at a stubborn child. For a thousand seasons it had heard the same question, yet it stayed unconvinced. But Mira never retreated from an argument she thought she could win.

The River's Case

The river answered that yielding was not surrender, and not defeat either. "I bend around the boulder," it murmured, "yet I carved this whole valley." Patience never stops, and it applies itself without pause. It does what sudden force could never manage alone. "The proud stone that resists me now will someday become the soft sand beneath my current." Great trees often snap in storms because they refuse to bend. The humble grasses bow low instead, and they bend with every wind. They survive every gale and rise again by morning. "To yield at the right moment is a rare discipline," it said. "It is not weakness."