Chinese Fables
Selected and Retold by Mary W. Ng
The Lost Sword
From Lushi Chunqiu
A man was crossing the river in a boat when he accidentally dropped his sword into the river. He immediately made a mark on the gunwale of the boat, saying, “With this mark, I shall find my sword.”
When the boat stopped moving, the man jumped into the river at the point where he had marked the gunwale, in an attempt to recover his sword.
Sadly, his attempt was futile.
The boat had been moving while the sword had not. It was foolish of the man to think that he could recover his sword that way. By the same token, as the world evolves it would be foolish of us not to adapt to a changing world.