One day, at dusk, an old farmer sat down on the porch of his humble home, to enjoy the cool breeze and the shade. Right next to his house there was a path that led to the next village.
As he was enjoying the sunset, another man passed by his house, and when he saw the farmer, he thought – “What a lazy man – he doesn’t work – everything he does is sitting on his doorstep and enjoying life.”
A little later there was another passerby, who thought: “This man looks like a Don Juan to me. He must be sitting there just to look at girls and try to seduce them.”
Finally, there was a ranger traveling to the village who thought: “This man is a hard worker. He worked hard all day and now he is enjoying his well deserved break.”
This story has a powerful message to deliver, all we need to do is read between the lines.
…In reality, we can’t know much about the farmer who is sitting on his porch. On the contrary, we can say a lot about the three people who were going to the village: the first one is lazy, the second one is a womanizer, and the third person is a hard worker.
The moral of this story is the following:
Everything we say – we say about ourselves; especially when we talk about other people.
Projection is a defense mechanism through which people ascribe to the outside world something that exists in their own inner world.
Next time be more careful when you talk about someone else; those words will probably say a lot more about you than about the people you are talking about.
