The above quote is mostly familiar to everyone, but the context of understanding it is subjective to each individuals. And everyone can relate with the idiom in different ways. This saying however gained prominence from one of Aesop’s fables. And I must say that the saying cuts across different aspects of human behavior as it affects our environment.
But for the sake of those that haven’t read the story before, I will do a quick paraphrase here
There lived a farmer who was deeply hit by poverty as a result of famine in the land. He sold all he had just to get by each day and was left with just one bird-a goose. It dawned on him one day however, that he had no other means of surviving and he realized he had no other option but to kill the only bird he had, to probably sell or eat.
To his greatest shock, as he went to the bird’s nest, he found the bird had laid an egg, yellow and shining. He picked up to be sure if it wasn’t his mind playing pranks on him. Upon further scrutiny and consultations when he got out, he found out he had just struck gold.
Every morning he went to the bird’s nest he found the same egg. Soon he became rich and full of affluence, but he wanted more; and he thought that if he could get all what the bird had to offer wouldn’t be such a bad idea, so he killed the bird and found nothing. He realized it was just like every other bird, but the damage had been done. He had killed the goose that gave him the golden egg.
That farmer’s behavior is often exhibited amongst us today. We eagerly wish to see immediate results of our toil, we forget the honorable and noble route of taking things slowly and believing everything it will all work out in our favour at the end.
Just because you stumbled on steemit, is that a good justification for quitting your job so soon; that is, killing the goose. Note, It is actually not a bad thing to go all in into something one believes in after proper research and due diligence has been done. However, it is bad if the motivation is instant gratification of what steemit has to offer. Such person will be like the farmer that got nothing after killing the bird. Because it is inspiration for success that rules here not desperation.
The key to everything in life is patience and you can only get the chicken in an egg by hatching and not by smashing. Are you a student and you feel you’ve stumbled on a goldmine of money making venture, thereby contemplating on dropping out.
Because Mark or Bill did it doesn’t guarantee success or riches like theirs, even if they had failed do you know what back up they’ve got? What can you fall back on when you eventually kill the goose and found nothing? Do not forget that you have a life you lived before you found that thing that brought sudden windfall of money.
And also just like in the words of @surpassinggoogle
Don’t let the steemit blogs with higher earnings hamper your growth and vision as a person. There was a YOU before you ever found steemit. How did blogging now suddenly become everything? Many of us have never blogged before, so how did we suddenly become bloggers?
The saying also pointed out the greed of man and the accompanying insatiable wants. It is normal to want, as that only makes us humans but the lack of contentment in anything is bad.
A chicken eats corn, drinks water, swallows pebbles, yet she complains of having no teeth. If she had teeth, would she eat gold? Let her ask the cow who has teeth yet eats grass
Whatever we do or are into, appreciation matters, let not what you don’t have spoil the YOU that has deposits beauty and good.
Thank you for reading and stay awesome
Image 1 from Donkey Hotey
Images 2,3
Thanks to @camzy for this cartoon image
