24 Short Stories About Life That Will Stay With You

Story One

The Two Wolves Inside You

An old Cherokee grandfather was teaching his grandson about life.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves."

"One wolf is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, lies, false pride, and self-pity. The other wolf is joy, peace, love, hope, kindness, truth, and compassion."

"This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person too."

The boy thought about it for a moment. Then he asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee answered simply, "The one you feed."

Story Two

The Mexican Fisherman and the Banker

An American investment banker was on vacation in a small Mexican village when a fisherman docked his boat with a few large tuna inside.

"How long did it take you to catch them?" the banker asked.

"Only a little while," the fisherman replied.

"Why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" the banker asked.

The fisherman smiled. "I have enough for my family's needs."

"But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late. I fish a little. I play with my children. I take a nap with my wife. I stroll into the village each evening to sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life."

The banker shook his head. "I can help you. You should spend more time fishing. With the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the bigger boat, buy several boats. Eventually you will own a fleet, then a cannery. You would need to move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, then New York to run your enterprise."

"How long would all this take?"

"Fifteen to twenty years."

"But then what?"

The banker laughed. "That's the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions."

"Millions? Then what?"

"Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a nap with your wife, and stroll into the village in the evening where you could sip wine and play guitar with your friends."

Story Three

The Cracked Pot

A water bearer in India had two large pots. He hung them at the ends of a pole that he carried across his neck. One pot was perfect. The other had a crack and always arrived at the master's house only half full.

For two years, this went on every day. The perfect pot was proud. The cracked pot was ashamed.

One day by the stream, the cracked pot finally spoke. "I am ashamed of myself," it said. "Because of my crack, I leak water all the way back to the house. You do all this work and don't get full value for your efforts."

The water bearer felt sorry for the old pot, and in his compassion he said, "As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the lovely flowers along the path."

As they went up the hill, the cracked pot took notice of beautiful wildflowers on its side of the path. But at the end of the trail it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load.

The water bearer said, "Did you notice that the flowers were only on your side of the path? That is because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path. Every day while we walk back from the stream, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house."

Story Four

Heaven and Hell: The Long Spoons

A holy man was having a conversation with God. He asked God to show him the difference between heaven and hell.

God led the holy man to two doors. The first door was opened. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a pot of stew that smelled delicious.

The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They each held spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms. Each spoon was long enough to reach the pot of stew, but the handle was too long to bring food to their mouths. The suffering was terrible.

"Come," God said. "Let me show you heaven."

God opened the second door. The room was identical to the first. There was the large round table, the pot of stew. The people had the same long-handled spoons. But here the people were well nourished and happy, talking with one another.

The holy man said, "I don't understand."

"It is simple," God replied. "It requires only one skill. You see, the people in heaven have learned to feed each other."

Story Five

The Three Sieves of Socrates

One day an acquaintance ran up to the great philosopher Socrates and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about your friend?"

"Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me, I would like you to pass a little test. It is called the Triple Filter Test."

"Triple Filter?"

"That's right. Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you are going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"No," the man said, "actually I just heard it."

"All right. So you don't really know if it is true or not. Now let us try the second filter, Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"

"No, on the contrary."

"So you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you are not certain it is true. You may still pass the test, because there is one filter left. The third filter is Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really."

"Well then," Socrates concluded, "if what you want to tell me is neither true, nor good, nor useful, why tell it to me at all?"

Story Six

The Old Farmer and His Horse

An old farmer had a single horse he used to plow his fields. One day the horse ran away. His neighbors came by and said, "Such bad luck."

"Maybe," the farmer said.

The next week, the horse returned, bringing with it a herd of three wild horses. "What great luck!" the neighbors said.

"Maybe," the farmer said.

The next day, the farmer's son tried to ride one of the wild horses. He was thrown to the ground and broke his leg. "Such bad luck," the neighbors said.

"Maybe," the farmer replied.

The next week, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Because the son was injured, they passed him by. "Such great luck," the neighbors said.

"Maybe," the farmer said.

Story Seven

The Boy and the Echo

A boy and his father were walking in the mountains. The boy tripped and fell, hurt himself, and screamed out, "Aaahhhhh!"

To his surprise, he heard a voice from somewhere in the mountains repeat: "Aaahhhhh!"

Curious, he yelled, "Who are you?"

The voice answered, "Who are you?"

Frustrated, the boy shouted, "Coward!"

The voice answered, "Coward!"

He looked to his father and asked, "What is going on?"

The father smiled and said, "Son, pay attention." Then he shouted to the mountain, "I admire you!"

The voice replied, "I admire you!"

The father shouted, "You are wonderful!"

The voice answered, "You are wonderful!"

The boy was confused. The father explained, "People call this an echo. But really, this is life. It gives you back what you give to it. Life is a mirror of your own actions. If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart. If you want more honesty, become more honest. This applies to everything, every aspect of life."

Story Eight

The Chinese Bamboo Tree

A farmer plants a small Chinese bamboo seed in the ground. He waters it. He fertilizes it. He waits.

The first year, nothing happens.

The second year, he waters and feeds it again. Nothing happens.

The third year and the fourth year, same thing. Not a single shoot above the ground.

Then, in the fifth year, something extraordinary happens. The bamboo tree shoots out of the ground and grows ninety feet tall in just six weeks.

The question is: did the tree grow ninety feet in six weeks, or did it grow ninety feet in five years?

The answer, of course, is five years. Because if the farmer had stopped watering during any of those years, the tree would have died in the ground.

Story Nine

The Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee Bean

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life, about how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed a carrot, in the second she placed an egg, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans.

She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. The daughter waited, wondering what her mother was doing.

After about twenty minutes, the mother turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the egg out and placed it in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.

"Tell me, what do you see?" she asked.

"A carrot, an egg, and coffee," the daughter replied.

The mother brought the daughter closer and asked her to feel the carrot. She did and noted that it was soft. She asked her to take the egg and break it. The daughter pulled off the shell and observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich flavor.

The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each object had faced the same adversity, the boiling water, but each had reacted differently. The carrot had gone in strong and hard, but in the boiling water it had become soft and weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting in the boiling water, its inside had become hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water itself.

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"

Story Ten

The Elephant and the Rope

A man was walking through an elephant camp. He noticed that the elephants were not kept in cages or held by heavy chains. All that held them back from escaping was a small piece of rope tied to one of their legs.

As the man looked at the elephants, he was completely confused. Why didn't they just use their strength to break the rope and escape? They could easily do it, but instead they did not try at all.

Curious, he asked a trainer nearby why the elephants didn't try to escape.

"Well," the trainer said, "when they are very young and much smaller, we use the same size rope to tie them. At that age, the rope is enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free."

The man was amazed. These animals could break free from their bonds at any time. But because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.

Story Eleven

The Thief and the Moon

Rain dripped through the roof of the hut on the mountain. The monk who lived there owned a bowl, a robe and a sleeping mat. That was the whole list.

A thief came in after dark and found nothing worth carrying. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands empty, getting angrier.

The monk sat up. He was not frightened. He said the man had walked a long way up a wet path and should not go home with nothing. Then he took off his robe and held it out.

The thief stared at him. He grabbed it and ran into the trees.

The monk sat in the doorway with no clothes on. The rain had stopped. Above the pines the moon was low and full, and the light lay on the wet ground like spilled milk. He watched it a long time.

In the morning a boy came up from the village with rice and found the monk shivering and smiling.

The boy asked what had happened.

The monk said a man came and took the robe.

The boy said that was terrible, and that the men from the village would find him and beat him.

The monk said no. He said he only wished he could have given the man the moon.

Story Twelve

The Ring the King Ordered

Make me a ring, the king said. Something I can wear every day. When I am low it should lift me. When I am high it should bring me down. You have three days.

The jeweller bowed and went home and did not sleep.

He tried words about courage. Too thin. He tried words about God. Too heavy for a man in a temper. He tried leaving it blank and hated the blank gold more than the bad words.

On the third night he sat on the step outside his workshop with his son. The goats went past in the dust. The boy asked what was wrong and the jeweller told him the whole thing, because there was nobody else left to tell.

The boy thought about it for a while. Then he said one sentence.

The jeweller went back inside and lit the lamp and worked until the birds started.

At noon he carried the ring to the palace. The king turned it in his fingers and read the four words cut into the inside of the band.

This too shall pass.

The king said nothing for a long moment. Then he laughed, once, short. He wore that ring through a war, a famine and the wedding of his daughter, and on the morning he died he was still turning it with his thumb.

Story Thirteen

The Keys Under the Lamp

Four men crouched in the road under the street lamp, patting the dust with the flats of their hands. A fifth came along and asked what had been lost.

The old man in the middle said his door key.

The fifth man got down on his knees and joined in. They searched the whole circle of light. They ran their fingers over every stone twice. Nothing.

After an hour he sat back on his heels and asked where exactly the key had fallen.

The old man pointed into the dark at the far end of the street, near his own gate.

Everybody stopped. One of them asked, quite reasonably, why they were all searching down here then.

The old man said the light was better here.

They laughed at him. They laughed for a good while, and one of them told his wife about it that night, and she laughed too, and it went round the village by the weekend.

The fifth man walked home. His wife asked how his day had been and he said fine. She asked if anything was wrong and he said no, nothing, and she went up to bed.

He stayed downstairs a while with the lamp on and the dark part of the house behind him.

Story Fourteen

The Miller and the Bridge

Market day, and a miller set off for town with his son and a donkey that nobody was riding.

Two women at the well saw them go by. What fools, they said, walking in this heat with a good animal doing nothing.

So the miller put the boy on the donkey.

Further on, a man mending a fence spat and said what a lazy son, sat up there while his old father walks in the dust.

So they swapped over.

At the bridge a group of girls shouted that it was shameful, a grown man riding and a small boy dragging along behind.

So they both got on.

Outside the town gate a butcher stopped them and said the poor beast would be dead by evening with the two of them on its back.

So they got down, cut a pole from the hedge, tied the donkey's feet to it and carried it upside down through the streets. People came out of their houses to watch. Somebody banged a pot. Halfway over the bridge the donkey kicked itself loose, went over the rail into the water, and the current took it.

The miller stood at the rail with the rope still in his hand and his son beside him, and between them they had nothing left to sell.

Story Fifteen

The Deer and the Scent

Snow on the high ridge, and a deer running through it half mad.

He had been running since autumn. Somewhere in these hills was a smell, sweet and warm and better than anything he had ever known, and he could not find where it came from. He had crossed three valleys. He had pushed his nose into caves and rotted logs and freezing streams. Every time he stopped, it was there. Every time he ran at it, it stayed the same distance away.

The old ones in the herd told him to come down and eat and lie in the sun. He would not. Food was nothing next to this.

He went higher, above the tree line, where the wind wiped out his tracks behind him. His ribs came up through his coat. His hooves split on the rock.

On a ledge near the top he lost his footing and went over, and landed badly in a gully, and could not get up again.

Lying on his side with his legs wrong underneath him and his breath going shallow, he could smell it. Stronger than ever. Right there.

He turned his head. It was coming from a gland in his own belly, warm under the fur, where it had been since the day he was born.

Story Sixteen

The Stonecutter's Wish

Chip. Chip. A stonecutter worked the foot of the mountain in the heat and hated every hour of it.

A rich man went past in a chair carried by four servants. The stonecutter said out loud that he wished he was that man. A voice in the rock said, be him then.

He was that man. Silk. Shade. Cold fruit. Then the sun came down hard through the silk and stung his skin, and he decided the sun was greater, and wished, and was the sun.

He burned the fields brown. He cracked the roads open. Then a cloud slid underneath him and blocked him out completely, and he decided the cloud was greater, and wished, and was the cloud.

He rained until the rivers came over their banks and took the villages with them. Everything shifted and slid and drowned except one thing. The mountain did not move at all.

He wished, and was the mountain. Nothing above him. Nothing harder. He stood there through years of weather and felt nothing whatsoever.

Then, down at his own foot, a small sharp knocking started. Chip. Chip. He looked down and saw a man in the heat with a hammer, taking pieces off him.

And he wished.

Story Seventeen

The Room Full of Gold

Gold plates, gold cups, a gold chair, and a king who wanted all of it noticed.

He walked his visitor through the treasury for an hour. Ivory. Horses. Chests that took two men to lift. Then he asked the old traveller, who was said to have seen most of the world, who the happiest man he had ever met was.

The traveller named a farmer from a small town. Decent sons. Enough land. Died fighting for his neighbours and was buried where he fell, with the whole town there.

The king asked who came second.

The traveller named two brothers who pulled their mother's cart to the temple with their own shoulders when the oxen did not arrive. They lay down afterwards in the shade and never woke up, and everyone agreed it was a fine way to go.

The king's face went tight. He asked whether his own happiness counted for nothing at all.

The traveller said he could not say yet. He said a life is one long thing and you cannot judge the shape of it from the middle. He said he would answer on the day the king died and not one hour before.

Years later, roped to a pile of wood by an enemy army with the fire being lit underneath him, the king said the traveller's name out loud three times.

Story Eighteen

The Quietest Sound

Before the sun was up the old woman walked her grandson out past the last house and told him to sit on a flat rock and not talk.

He was eight. He lasted about a minute. He asked what they were waiting for.

She said nothing.

He heard a truck on the far road. He heard a dog. He heard his own stomach. He told her he was cold, and she put her blanket over his shoulders and said nothing again.

The sky went from black to grey to pink along one edge. The dog gave up. The truck went away over the hill.

He got bored enough to actually listen.

Under everything there was a sound he had never heard in his life, low and steady, like a hand moving over cloth. He said there was something out there.

She asked what.

He said water. He said it had to be the creek behind the ridge, and that was miles.

She nodded, stood up, folded the blanket over her arm and said they could go home now.

Walking back he asked how long she had known that sound was there.

She said all his life.

Story Nineteen

The Farmer Who Bought Hours

A farmer stood in his field at dusk with half the hay still down and swore at the sky for taking the light so early.

Something answered him from the birch wood at the edge of the field. It said it could sell him more hours. Two extra in every day, for a price he would never notice.

He asked what the price was.

It said, a little off the end.

He said done, and shook a cold hand, and went back to work. The sun hung there two hours longer than it had any right to and he got the whole crop in.

It was good. He built the new barn. He cleared the stones out of the top field. He drained the wet corner, fenced it, bought a second horse. Every single day he had two more hours than any man he knew, and he used all of them.

His wife stopped waiting up. His daughter learned to read, then to ride, then to argue with him about the farm.

One evening he came in late and there was a young woman at his table with a baby on her hip, and she called him father.

The last time he had really looked at her she was six.

Story Twenty

The Mug on the Desk

Someone had left a mug of tea on the desk and it had gone cold and grown a skin on top.

Priya was the one who cleared it. Nobody asked her to. She came in on the Monday and the desk was exactly as it had been on the Thursday. The jumper over the back of the chair. The reading glasses. A sticky note that said CALL ANDY.

He had been there nineteen years. He was the one who knew which server did what, and why the invoice system behaved strangely every March, and where the spare keys were. He worked late most nights. He had a folder on his machine called HOLIDAY IDEAS that he showed her once, laughing at himself.

She put the glasses in a box. She put the jumper in the box. She wiped the desk and the ring the mug had made would not come off, so she left it.

On the Wednesday there was an email about the funeral. On the same Wednesday there was a second email about the recruitment process, which had already opened.

The new man started three weeks later. Nice enough. He asked whether anybody minded him moving the desk closer to the window, and nobody did.

Story Twenty One

The Forty Minute Visit

The lift smelled of soup and disinfectant, and Marcus checked his watch in it twice.

Forty minutes. He would do forty minutes and then say something about beating the traffic. That was the deal he made with himself in the car park every Tuesday.

His nan was in the chair by the window with her cardigan buttoned wrong. She lit up when she saw him. She always did, which somehow made the whole thing harder.

She asked about work. He told her about work. She asked about Steph and the boys. He told her about Steph and the boys. On the side table there were two biscuits she had saved from lunch, sitting on a napkin, for him.

At forty five minutes he stood up.

On his way out he stopped at the desk to hand back the visitor badge, and the woman there said it was lovely, how regular he was.

He said it was nothing.

She said no, honestly. She said his nan starts asking on the Sunday whether it is Tuesday yet. Asks again Monday. Gets her hair done Monday afternoon, for it.

He sat in the car park a while before he started the engine.

Story Twenty Two

The Boy at the Deep End

Chlorine and shouting, and a boy standing at the edge of the pool with both arms in the air.

Dad. Dad. Watch.

His father was on the bench with his phone, thumb going, half an eye up. He said yep. He said go on then. The boy jumped, badly, all knees, and came up out of the water looking for the face on the bench, and the face was pointing down.

This happened eleven times. Somebody could have counted them.

Then the boy stopped asking. He swam to the far end and stayed there with the other kids and did that jump about forty more times and never looked over once.

The father finished what he was doing, put the phone in the bag and looked up, and for a second could not work out which one in the water was his.

He found him. He watched him for twenty minutes. Good jumps, actually. Better than he would have guessed.

In the changing room he said he had seen them, and they were brilliant, and the boy said thanks and pulled his shirt down over his wet head and asked if they could get chips on the way home.

Story Twenty Three

The Third Skip

Kelly counted the skips outside number twelve. Three of them since April.

First the kitchen, then the loft, then the thing at the back with the folding glass doors. She watched it all from her own kitchen, which had a cupboard door that never sat straight and lino by the bin that was starting to lift.

She and Dan began saying it out loud. That they should. That maybe next year. She got two quotes, looked at the numbers and put the folder in the drawer under the takeaway menus.

In August she was pulling weeds out of the front when the woman from number twelve came over with a card for the street collection. They talked about the weather. Then the woman nodded back at her own house and said, well, we had to spend it on something.

Kelly said sorry?

The woman said the payout. From her husband's firm. They let him go last year, after the diagnosis, and there was a settlement, and he wanted the house finished while he could still see it.

She said it in a completely normal voice.

Then she went on to number fourteen with her card and her pen, and Kelly stood by the bins and looked at the glass doors again.

Story Twenty Four

The Number on the Fridge

A magnet, an old envelope, and one number written on the back of it in blue biro. Fourteen.

Rosa put it there after her mother's birthday. She had worked out that she went home twice a year, that her mother was seventy six, and that the internet had firm opinions about how long seventy six year olds tend to carry on for. Twice a year, seven years. Fourteen.

She assumed it would sit there and nag at her and that she would ignore it, the way she ignored the gym card.

Instead it did something else. She started noticing what fourteen actually meant. Fourteen more of that particular smell in the hallway. Fourteen more arguments about the immersion heater. Fourteen more of her mother saying she did not want anything for Christmas, and meaning it, and being wrong.

In March she moved a work trip so she could stay four days instead of two. In June she went home for no reason at all, which had never happened before, and her mother asked her twice whether something was the matter.

They sat out in the garden until it got cold. Her mother told her about a boy from the village she had never once mentioned in forty years.

Rosa drove back and changed the number to twenty.