My Own Parable: What Do We Struggle For?

It was a rainy afternoon and on the street, with a fifteen-meter-distance between, were sitting two children with worn out clothes stained with mud and the raindrops. Their feet were naked and clothes too thin to protect them from the coldness the rain brought. They were calling the passers-by with their soft childish voices distinguished by reluctance and desperation. They resembled very much to each other, both had brown hair and brown eyes in the same shape and pale, thin lips which widened for a few seconds with every coin dropped before them; and with every coin each boy look at the other and smiled blithely.

A man, dressed in a radiant black suit, wearing polished black shoes and a navy tie, carrying a large black briefcase, dropped something out of his pocket to the hat where the boy’s coins accumulated; it did not fall down right away like a coin, it hovered in the air while the boy’s eyes widened and glowed with what he saw – it was a $100 banknote. When it fell on the coins, the boy took it up, his mouth opened in amazement and his eyes glimmered with joy. When he managed to take his eyes off from the banknote and look at his brother, he saw him watching with curious eyes. He folded the banknote quickly and put it in his pocket, tried to hide his astonishment, to act as usual and not to make an eye contact with his brother again. But his brother was collecting the coins before him and putting them in his pocket and was soon running towards him.

First he asked him what it was that he put into his pocket and the boy replied “Nothing.” His brother shouted and attacked onto him trying to take the money off from his pocket. Two little boys began to roll around the pavement, biting each other’s limbs and pulling each other’s hair whenever they could, shouting at each other sometimes in anger and sometimes in pain. The banknote passed from one boy’s hands to the other’s, and soon began to wrinkle, rip and fall apart. The coins in their pockets scattered around as they turned and rolled from one side to other. The many pieces of the banknote were scattering around and there were none left in the boys’ little hands. But they were still struggling, snarling and growling at each other, with blood on their teeth and limbs.

A passer-by man approached and stopped the two boys from hitting each other, and asked “What are you two fighting so hard for?” The two boys looked at the man and then each other blankly, and only after a while remembered the banknote and turned their heads to the ground where the coins and the pieces of the banknote were scattered around.