#71 - Parable of the Oxbow Lake

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Once there was a group of fishermen. Some wore red anoraks, others wore blue. They fished everyday in a river and caught lots of fish. Their families prospered because they had lots of food to eat.

One day the fishermen noticed that the river stopped flowing as it used to and there were very few fish. They discussed the problem amongst themselves and they could not agree on the reason. The red fishermen said, “The river must have changed direction. Let’s go and find out what’s happened.”

So the red fishermen went off to see what the problem was. They soon found that they were right. The river had stopped flowing around their old fishing grounds and was now flowing in another direction. They said to one another, “Let’s go and tell the blue fishermen what’s happened.”

The red fishermen told the blue fishermen, “The river has changed direction. We are going to fish in the new fishing grounds now. Why don’t you come and join us?”

The blue fishermen replied, “We can’t do that. We’ve always fished in these parts. Perhaps the river will start to flow here again one day.”

So the red fishermen went off to fish in the new fishing grounds. Their families prospered because they had lots of food to eat. Meanwhile, the blue fishermen got poorer and poorer and their health began to fail.

The blue fishermen encouraged their children to fish with them, but after a while, their children saw that this stretch of the river was no longer good for fishing. Some of the children joined the red fishermen in the new fishing grounds, while others gave up fishing altogether.

One day, one of the red fishermen went back to the old stretch of river. He looked sadly at the places where he used to fish but he could not find any of the blue fishermen. They had all given up and their families had perished. The red fisherman said to himself, “I’m so glad I moved to the new fishing ground. If I had stayed here, I would have perished too. This place is now derelict.”