Two educational stories with the same moral

A fact with the magician Houdini

Houdini was an expert in escaping from anywhere they would shut him, for example he quickly escaped from a locked trunk which was thrown to the sea. But he once found great difficulty when they shut him in the cell of a French prison. Time was passing by and Houdini would not show up, so the people of the central office of the prison where they were expecting him got worried and wondered whether something had happened to him, perhaps a heart attack, since Houdini managed easier in more difficult ventures, so they went to the cell to see what was going on, but on arriving there they saw the door opening and Houdini coming out ghastly and almost puffed after three whole hours of attempts. Why did Houdini encountered such difficulty there? Because they had forgotten to lock the door! In all his tricks to break the lock he would not find any resistance and this meant for him that he needed another trick. Only after three hours of exhaustion he fell on the door and opened it!..

So the most difficult part is the understanding that the door (the passage to authentic life) is open, and what most of all frightens is for the door to be already wide open, because this bring to mind the suspicion that passing through it one has genuine freedom – a great fear since this entails the greatest of responsibility.

A “simple” story

Mum and dad left one morning their little child at his grand-parents for a couple of days. They played until midday and everything was fine until the afternoon, but in the evening when they put the child to bed he started crying:

-          I want mum and dad. I ‘m afraid of the dark!

-          But you sleep in the dark when you are at your house, said granny.

-          Yes, but that is my own darkness!

Here is the moral of both stories:

Most people live in their own darkness and try in vain to break an unlocked door.

Astroyiannis (Yannis Simeonoglou)