A story related by Rabbi Hugo Gryn from his native Czechoslovakia about a swan. A river flooded and swelled and the only way the still-weak cygnets could be saved would be if the father swan carried them on his back to a distant and safer bank. Halfway across he asked the first one, ‘How will you treat me when you grow up?’ ‘Oh, I’ll be the best son in the world to you! I’ll obey you, care for you, love you . . . ’ ‘You little hypocrite,’ said the father, and dropped him. He asked the same question of the second fledgling. ‘What’s the difference?’ he replied. ‘You just get me to the other side.’ ‘You are no good,’ said the father and dropped him. The third cygnet thought a while and said: ‘I’m not sure how I will act, but I can tell you this: I shall treat my young the way you treat me.’ And in the story that one got saved.
It is a story of both honesty and direction. We are products of our origins. And yet we often forget where we have come from and attempt to outsmart our roots. The moral: Stay true to who you were and are. And do the right thing.
Comments