MOSS MESSAGE
Magna Carta
Once upon a time there was a man who had a transport delivery system, that is, he owned a cart and a horse. “Special Custom Carting! No Job Too big!”
Week after week, year after year, he hauled loads. Until one day his delivery system failed to function.
“The cart has stopped!” he said. Meticulously, he went over every component of the system.
“Wheels OK? Check. Axles OK? Check. Cart OK? Check.” He scratched his head. “I can’t figure out what’s the matter!” So he got some lumber and some metal, and rebuilt his cart.
“My cart is state of the art!” he said, and loaded up the refurbished cart, but alas…
“The system still won’t function! The bloody cart still fails to move.” He oiled and greased all the moving surfaces. He painted and varnished the woodwork and polished the metal. He even installed new springs for an easier ride. But when he loaded up the cart again…you guessed it.
“My ruddy cart still won’t move!” he said. “Clearly something is amiss in the system. I’m getting no productivity.” So he walked down to the village square and found a wise old wizard. The wizard, who also moonlighted as a productivity consultant as well being very wise, took his consulting fee in advance and then walked back with the Cart Man to inspect the transport delivery system.
“Well,” said the wizard, “from what I can see, you’ve ruled out malfunction in the cart?”
“Yes!” said the Cart Man. “And the wheels, and the axles, and the springs!”
“Well,” said the wizard, “that leaves one possible source of malfunction: the horse.”
“The horse?” said the Cart Man. “What do you mean?”
“Well, said the wizard, “if everything else is working, what else is there? Why isn’t your horse pulling the cart? Is your cart too heavy?”
“What do you mean? All the stuff in the cart is good stuff that needs to be pulled.”
“Indeed,” said the Wizard. “But is your load too much for the horse to pull? Maybe you need to lighten the load.”
“My load is a good load,” said the Cart Man. “Everything in there is worthy of pulling. Every item in the cart is important to somebody. How can I leave this or that out? The load is what’s important! It’s the horse’s function to pull the load. Now giddy-up!” he shouted, but the horse didn’t move.
“The horse can’t pull this much stuff,” the wizard said, lighting his pipe. “You’ve loaded it up beyond its ability to bear the load. The burden’s too great.”
“Folks need the burden pulled,” said the Cart Man. “Therefore it must be pulled.”
“Why don’t you give your horse an incentive to pull?” asked the Wizard?
“That’s good advice,” said the Cart Man, who pulled out a stick and hit the horse in the rear. The horse promptly fell to the ground and didn’t move. The Cart Man hit the horse again, but it didn’t move.
“I didn’t say a ‘disincentive to not pull’,” said the wizard. “And you’ll never get anywhere beating a dead horse.”
“How do you know its dead?” asked the Cart Man. The wizard shrugged. “Besides,” said the Cart Man, “it was a lazy horse with a deficient sense of social responsibility. It should have been grateful to sacrifice for the needs of others.”
The Cart Man bent down and unhooked the harness, then turned to the cart. Unfortunately he had been right and the wizard incorrect: the horse wasn’t dead. It leaped up, put both back hooves forcefully into the Cart Man’s rear end, and sent him flying into a pig sty. Then the horse trotted away and found a new master, who treated it kindly and never asked it to haul too much, and the two prospered together ever after.
So the moral of the story is:
Your need doesn’t obligate someone else to deliver.
OR
Don’t forget the one who actually pulls the load.
OR:
Always put the Horse before the Cart.
