One Mouse, Two Mice

[The following little story was written by my favorite author as the closing words in one of his unpublished works.]

An Awakening

There were two blind men, so-called “brothers-in-arms,” blinded in some past conflict, but separated by the fact that one was a Palestinian, the other a Jew. They were on a beach in the company of seven sighted pranksters. When the group happened upon an elephant, the ones who could see remembered the ancient story, and decided to have some fun with their blinded friends.

“Here, Abdul, Mosche, come, tell us what this is.”

The blind Jew was led to one part of the elephant, the Palestinian to another. Predictably, the two sightless men came up with remarkably different answers to the pranksters’ question, and in no time were heatedly arguing between themselves about the essence of the thing they had encountered. Their sadistic comrades found this extremely funny.

But here the story twists. The blind men’s squabbling did not provide lasting amusement, so the pranksters added a measure of humiliation. “Why you blind fools,” one of them screamed. “The thing is not what either of you said. It’s a blinkin’ elephant!”

The Palestinian and the Jew stopped cold in their argument. Almost at the same instant, they both realized that the thing was indeed an elephant, that the information their brief and partial encounter had provided was wholly consistent with what they remembered about elephants.

At first, they were angry, but their inner eyes sprang open and a question formed itself in their minds: “How could we have fallen into dispute over such a mistake? We should not even have to know the thing is an elephant to realize we were both talking about different aspects of the same thing.”

Then one of them spoke. “My brother-in-arms, the joke is on all of us here on this beach, for have we not throughout our lives all been as blind as you and I are now? Because we could not disbelieve what appeared different to us, we have believed the world is different, but...”

“Yes! Yes!” the other blind man interrupted. “There is only one world, one universe. How can it possibly be different?”

The pranksters laughed until their sides pained them, but the two brothers-in-arms walked unaided down the beach, never again in need of eyes to see.

It has been within the scope of this book, indeed, as its only purpose, to weaken the power of fatal beliefs, and to create, if possible, for every human being, the sense of his own power as a cause in the world. With success, an old man, a brother-in-arms, can rest in peace.