One day, a donkey fell in to a well. It cried piteously for hours while the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Ultimately, the farmer decided that the donkey was old and was nor worth saving. He planned to fill the well, as he had no need for it either. He invited his neighbours to come over and help him. Everyone grabbed a spade and shovelled dirt into the well.
The donkey was terrified; sooner or later he would literally be buried alive, with no food, water or air. It cried even more and begged the farmer to show mercy. The people ignored the animal’s neighing and screeching. The donkey was about to give up. There was no hope of getting out the well and soon it would die a slow, suffocating death. But then, it came up with a cunning plan. As the dirt slowly filled the well, the donkey stepped up on the mound of earth. Eventually, the mound grew high enough for it to jump out of the well. The donkey then kicked the farmer and galloped off into the sunset.
Life is bound to throw all kinds of dirt at you. But just because bad things happen, it does not mean you have to live a miserable life. When life throws a spadeful of dirt at you, brush it off and step over it instead of letting it weigh you down. With a positive mindset and determination to become happy, you can escape even when you fall into the darkest, deepest well of despair.
There once lived a community of mice in the attic of a house. The mice would sneak into kitchens, gnaw holes in the walls and run about freely. The owners were so fed up that they brought in a cat, causing the mice to all hide in fear. The terrified mice eventually held a meeting to discuss how they would sneak around the house without getting caught by the cat. One mouse suggested: “What if we put a bell around the neck of the cat? Then we can hear it coming and run away.”. The mice unanimously agreed that it was a brilliant idea. However, when they came to decide who would bell the cat, no mouse was brave enough to step forward and the plan was never carried out.
What would actually happen if a cat was belled? Without a doubt, the cat would take it as a cruel, cruel punishment. Not because it cannot catch mice, but because the sound of the bell ringing every time it moves will be extremely loud for the cat. A cat’s hearing is six times better than a human’s. With this excellent hearing, the constant sound of bells attacking its eardrums would be physical torture for the cat.
Furthermore, a cat can hear frequencies as high as 40,000Hz. A person can only hear up to 20,000Hz, meaning a cat hears over twice the range of sounds we can. This combined with the boosted volume results in the cat living in a very noisy world. Ergo, putting a bell around a cat’s neck is an extremely atrocious thing to do.
A short story of very small word count is known as a flash fiction. However, most flash fictions are between 300 and 1000 words. There are shorter examples such as nanofictions, which are flash fictions exactly 55 words long. But due to the criteria that a story must have a beginning, middle, ending, protagonist etcetera, it is quite difficult to write a story any shorter than that.
Ernest Hemingway once made a bet with a friend that he could write a short story which would have just six words. Of course, Hemingway being Hemingway, he easily completed the challenge. Like any other story, Hemingway’s short story had a beginning, middle and an end. It had a protagonist, a conflict and a resolution. Even within such a small word count, he filled the story with a variety of themes such as hope, joy, tragedy and agony. However, as so much content has been compressed to the extreme, the story may take a few reads to completely understand it. Hemingway’s story is as follows:
Aries is the Zodiac sign for those born between March 21 and April 20. The symbol for Aries is a golden ram.
The model for Aries is a golden ram that rescued Phrixus and his sister Helle. The two were the children of King Athamas of Boeotia and Nephele, goddess of clouds. Athamas had divorced Nephele and married another woman named Ino, who spited the two children and plotted to rid them for good. When the season for planting seeds came, she gave farmers roasted seeds. These seeds of course did not grow and it led to a famine. The people were afraid of starving and sent messengers to an oracle. Ino bribed these messengers to tell the people that they needed to sacrifice Phrixus and Helle. But before they were killed, the two were rescued by a flying golden ram sent by their mother, Nephele. The ram flew across the ocean to take them to a safer place, but unfortunately Helle fell off and drowned. Phrixus survived the journey and he ended up in Colchis, where he met with King Aeetes who offered him hospitality and even his daughter’s hand in marriage. Phrixus sacrificed the ram in honour of the gods for saving his life and gifted the king with the golden fleece of the ram in gratitude. Zeus was so moved by this tragic tale and the ram’s sacrifice to save the children that he gave it the greatest honour of becoming a constellation in the heavens.
Pisces is the Zodiac sign for those born between February 19 and March 20. The symbol for Pisces is two fish connected by a ribbon.
The model for Pisces is Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and her son Eros. One day, the two were attending a banquet of the gods, having a good time. Suddenly, the banquet was interrupted by a monster named Typhon. Typhon was a terrifying monster 150km wide, with a hundred dragon heads, a hundred mouths through which he breathed fire and had limbs of snakes. He was a composite of various beasts such as oxens and lions, had a black tongue and had eloquent speech rivalling certain gods. When he appeared, the gods were frightened and all transformed into different animals to escape. Aphrodite and Eros jumped into the river, turned into a pair of fish and escaped. It is said that they tied a ribbon to their waists so that they would not lose each other in the stream.
In 450 BC, a Greek philosopher named Zeno thought of the following paradox. Let us imagine that Achilles and a tortoise were to have a footrace. Achilles, obvious being faster than the tortoise, allows the tortoise to have a head start of 100 metres. Once the race starts, Achilles will quickly catch up to the tortoise. However, within the time he took to cover the distance, the tortoise would have travelled some distance as well (say 10 metres). When Achilles runs the 10m to catch up again, the tortoise has once again toddled on another metre. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, theoretically the tortoise will be ahead of Achilles for eternity.
According to this thought experiment, motion is paradoxical and theoretically impossible. However, we know for a fact that motion happens. So how can we break Zeno’s paradox?
The main flaw of Zeno’s paradox is that he uses the concept of “eternity”. If we record the story mathematically, the time taken for Achilles to run the footrace is (if it took him 10 seconds to run 100m): 10 + 1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + 0.001… = 11.111… Ergo, the tortoise is only ahead of Achilles for less than 11.2 seconds (rounded). After 11.2 seconds pass, the time passed exceeds the sum of the infinite series and the paradox no longer applies.
Although it is a flawed paradox, the story of Achilles and the tortoise teaches the concept of geometric series – that something finite can be divided an infinite amount of times. For example, 1 = ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16… ad infinitum. This principle is a crucial part of mathematics and has significant implications in the field of economics. For example, it can be used to calculate the value of money in the future, which is necessary for working out mortgage payments and investment returns. Perhaps it is because of this mathematical principle that it seemingly takes an infinite amount of time to pay off a mortgage.
Zeno’s paradox teaches us that one should not take the concept of infinity for granted.
During the 11th century, the town of Coventry was suffering grievously under the earl’s oppressive taxation scheme. The earl’s wife, Lady Godiva, took pity on the people and pleaded her husband to lift the heavy taxes. The husband refused over and over, until one day in exasperation he made a wager: if she would ride through the streets of Coventry naked, he would grant her request. The earl believed that she would never undertake such a shameful, scandalous act. Lady Godiva pondered on the decision for a while, but then agreed on the condition that her husband keep his word.
Rumour quickly spread of what Lady Godiva was willing to do for the sake of her people. Out of respect and appreciation, the people of Coventry mutually agreed to stay indoors behind shuttered windows to preserve her dignity as she passed. On the fateful day, Lady Godiva set out on her white horse, stark naked and only draped by her long luscious hair. The entire town was silent, with every person in their home with the windows closed shut so that the Lady was the only one passing by, with no one to see her. However, one man, a tailor by the name of Tom, could not overcome his curiosity and lust and decided to peep through a hole in his shutter to gaze at her nude body. At that moment, he was struck blind, being punished for his voyeurism (this is the origin of the term “peeping tom”). In the end, the earl reluctantly abolished the onerous taxes, admiring his wife’s bravery and the respect the people had for her.
Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful girl named Psyche. Psyche was so beautiful that she even caught Aphrodite’s eyes. Despite being the goddess of love, Aphrodite was known to be very jealous and felt threatened by Psyche’s beauty. She commanded her son Eros, the god of love, to put a spell on Psyche. Eros uses the Bow of Love and anyone shot by his golden arrows falls immediately and helplessly in love with the first thing they see.
Aphrodite came up with a devious plan to have Eros shoot Psyche and have frogs around her, making her fall in love with frogs and fall into a despairing relationship. But her jealous plan was overthrown by an unexpected event. When Eros first saw Psyche’s face, he became entranced and accidentally pricked himself with his own arrow. Thus, Eros became madly in love with Psyche. Aphrodite, enraged by this, cursed Psyche to never find a mate for the rest of her life. Eros became depressed from not being able to see Psyche and gave up shooting golden arrows. After he gave up his job, no animals or human fell in love and no new life was born. Aphrodite could not bear to see such a scene and begged Eros to start shooting arrows again, offering him one thing that he wanted. Eros said that he desired Psyche without hesitation and Aphrodite reluctantly allowed them to meet.
While this happened, Aphrodite’s curse made no man come to propose to Psyche. Her parents became worried and asked the advice of the oracle at Apollo’s temple. The oracle stated that as she is destined to marry a monster, she must be placed atop a mountain in bridal attire. Accepting her fate, Psyche stood on the mountain but eventually jumped off a cliff in despair. But Zephyrus the West Wind caught her and brought her safely to Eros’ place, just as Eros planned. Psyche enjoyed a comfortable life in the beautiful castle with many maids at her service. However, her husband only came in the deep dark of the night. Whether it was because he feared Aphrodite’s wrath or the difference between a god and a mortal, he asked her to never try find out who he was and that if she truly loved him, she should trust him. But Psyche eventually fell victim to her jealous sisters’ scheme and her curiosity, leading to her accidentally dropping candle wax on Eros’ face as she took a peek at his face. Eros was awakened and became enraged. He chased her away and forbade her from coming back. Psyche fell in despair and threw herself into the river, but the river carried her to the riverside where the shepherd god Pan rescued and consoled her.
At first, Psyche tried to find Eros while avoiding Aphrodite, but eventually she decides to plea directly to her. Despite her bravery, Aphrodite threw challenging tasks one after another at her like a mean mother-in-law, ultimately commanding her to retrieve some beauty from Persephone, the queen of the underworld (since travelling to the underworld signifies death, Aphrodite must have truly hated Psyche).
However, Psyche was determined to see Eros even at the cost of her life. Admiring her commitment, a tall tower before the underworld gave her a hint. It told her to place two coins on her tongue and bread in each hand when going to the underworld. The coins would be to pay Charon the ferryman while the bread would distract Cerberus the three-headed dog guardian. She succeeded in seeing Persephone, who gave her a box of beauty and told her to never open it. But wanting to look beautiful in front of her lover (Eros), Psyche opened the box. The box did not contain beauty, but instead contained a death-like sleep from the underworld, putting Psyche in a deep sleep. Although he chased her away, Eros came back to see Psyche and found her in this sleeping state. He took the corpse-like Psyche and kissed her softly on her lips, awakening her from the deep sleep.
Eros eventually sought help from the king of gods, Zeus, to persuade Aphrodite. After Zeus’ persuasion and seeing the love the two have for each other, Aphrodite accepted the relationship and Zeus gave Psyche the immortal drink ambrosia to make her into a goddess. The now immortal Psyche and Eros were married and had a daughter named Hedone (like in Hedonism), the goddess of sensual pleasures.
Eros symbolises physical and sensual love while Psyche is a Greek symbol for butterflies, the soul and emotional love. Ergo, Eros and Psyche represent the union of physical and emotional love into perfect love. Love and the soul are inseparable things. The most basic instinct of any organism is to reproduce and human beings have evolved that into the sacred concept that is love. To speak bluntly and without philosophy, from a purely biological perspective there is no greater purpose to life than to find a suitable mate and leave descendants. There is nothing more fundamental than pure love.
