This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Every year when the seasons change, migratory birds are busy moving to places suitable for them to live. One autumn, a flock of swans flew in from the distant north and stopped for a while on a lake on a small island, getting ready to go south for the winter.
On this little island lived a fisherman and his wife, who depended on each other. When they saw these guests from afar they were very happy, and carefully fed the swans with chicken feed and the small fish they caught. When winter came, the swans, having plenty of food, did not continue south at all. And after the lake froze over, because the swans could not find food, the couple opened up the large house next door so that they could keep warm inside, and went on feeding them until the lake thawed the following spring.
And so it went, day after day, year after year. Every winter the old couple devoted their loving care in this way, tenderly looking after the swans. But time makes people old, and later the couple, too old to go on making a living by fishing, left the island.
After they left the island, the swans disappeared too. But they did not fly south; they starved to death while the lake was frozen the next year.
The fisherman and his wife cared for the swans in every way, as they would their own children, providing food and shelter, and devoting their love “day after day, year after year,” so that the swans never had to worry about food or lodging. Many people, I believe, would praise the couple’s kindness, and these lucky swans.
In real life, how many parents spend their whole lives toiling away to create a comfortable, cosy little nest for their children!
In real life, how many parents spend their whole lives toiling away to create a comfortable, cosy little nest for their children!
Sadly, the swans’ tragic end also mercilessly reminds us that it was precisely the fisherman and his wife’s excessively indulgent love that let the swans sink into a life of leisure and ease, made them lazy, and made them gradually lose their survival instincts so that they no longer flew south. In the end the swans, having lost their instinct for life and the basis of their survival, and with the old couple gone, could no longer adapt to their environment and were swallowed up by the harsh local conditions!
And in real life, how many parents spend their whole lives toiling away to create a comfortable, cosy little nest for their children!
When the children are small, they hold them in their hands for fear they will fall, and in their mouths for fear they will melt. When the children ask for the stars, they dare not give them the moon; let alone have the children do a few chores, endure a little hardship or get a little tired. Instead they let the children live in pampered comfort, a life of “tea comes and they stretch out a hand, food comes and they open their mouths.”
When the children grow up, the parents are busy pulling strings and using connections, hoping only to help the children find a job with no worries about food and clothing, lots of money, little work and close to home. They even want to leave the children as large an inheritance as possible, while they themselves scrimp and save, unwilling to spend a cent more.
Isn’t this just like the “fisherman and his wife”? But thinking of the swans’ end, can we still look with reverence on the excessively indulgent love of parents?
In fact, this kind of love that single-mindedly creates comfort and ease and seems “attentive in every detail” is precisely one of life’s “traps.” Those who fall into it will in the end have nothing, left only with dependence and laziness. Once their living conditions change, lacking the ability to adapt to life and unable to endure hardship, these children will fare no better than the swans.
Every child truly needs love; it is only that when this love becomes excessive and distorted, the result is not good for the child’s growth.
