A wolf found that a local lion frequently took the wolf’s kills.  The wolf would patiently stalk and hunt and kill, only to have the lion drive him off before he had eaten more than a bite or two.

The wolf brooded on this injustice but could think of no other remedy than to avoid the lion in his hunting.  But this often meant hunting in areas with less game, and still resulted with the lion driving the wolf off more than the wolf would like.

The wolf then hit on a clever plan.  Instead of avoiding the lion, he would hunt only where the lion was.  Over time, the lion would become dependent on the wolf’s hunting and would be unable to survive on his own.  The wolf would then flee and the lion would starve.

The wolf then set about his plan and was well on his way to success when he himself died of starvation.

Moral: Your plans always affect yourself.

Comment:  The wolf’s plan is clever in its way and could probably be the basis for a fable that illustrates the folly of becoming too dependent.  Yet this fable makes what seems to me to be a more important point.  Too many plans fail because they see the world as static.  Even very smart and experienced people make plans of this kind.  In the fable, one way the wolf’s plan could fail would be the lion figuring out the danger of dependency and hunting on his own occasionally just to keep his skills up.  The wolf would have no way of preventing it.  But an even graver error, and one that has a moral dimension, is that people forget that they themselves will be changed by their plans.


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