Chinese Fables
Selected and Retold by Mary W. Ng
The Wait for the Hare
From Han Feizi
A farmer in the State of Song was ploughing the field one day when he saw a hare running wildly. The hare ran into a tree stump nearby, broke its neck, and died.
The farmer reaped without sowing and took the dead hare home for dinner.
Since then he had not picked up his hoe. Instead, he sat beside the tree stump where he had found the dead hare, and waited patiently for another hare to meet the same fate.
No other hare came his way. But the farmer had become the laughing stock of the whole state.
One should be proactive instead of passively waiting for things to happen.