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Here are three jokes I am often reminded of when people recount to me how they have undermined their own well-being. I tried to trace their source, but up to now with no success. After recounting the jokes, I suggest possible interpretations.
The Hunters and the Pilot
Two hunters rent a light plane to take them to the North Pole, where they'll hunt some birds. Before leaving them there the pilot says: “I’ll return to pick you up in a week. But remember: this is a light plane. It can carry just the weight of all three of us and one bird. If we’ll load on it an extra bird it will crash. So there’s no point in your hunting more than one bird.”
“Got it,” say the hunters, and he takes off, returning after a week to find them waiting for him with two birds. “But why two birds?” he asks. “I explained that if we'll take a second bird we’ll crash.” “Yea,” reply the hunters, “but we remember that last year, when you said the same thing, we paid you an extra hundred dollars and you agreed to take also a second bird.”
The pilot thinks a bit and says “yes, that's right. That’s what happened last year. OK, let’s do it." They pay him an extra hundred dollars, load also the second bird on the plane, and take off.
Of course, after ten minutes the plane crashes. They crawl out of the flamed ruins of the plane barely alive, badly burned, and with broken limbs to find the plane’s radio smashed and themselves in the middle of the ice desert with no supplies.
“Do you have a clue where we are?” they ask the pilot.
“No,” he answers, “but it can’t be very far from the place we also crashed last year.”
Waiting for a Child
A slightly overweight father waits at the kindergarten’s gate to pick up his child. Soon a mother joins him to wait for her own child. They stand in silence. After a few minutes, the mother is bored and decides to strike a conversation. She smiles at the father pleasantly and says: “So, are you too waiting for a child?” The father looks at her coldly and says “No, I’m just fat.”
Twice as Much to Your Neighbor
A farmer finds an old lamp in his field. While cleaning it a Jinn emerges and says: “Behold, I'm the Jinn of twice as much to your neighbor. I can grant you one wish. You'll get absolutely anything you ask for. But see your neighbor there, on the other side of the fence, whom you don’t like very much? He’ll get twice as much as you do.”
"Wait a minute," says the farmer. “Does that mean that if I’ll ask for a huge palace he’ll get two huge palaces?”
“Right,” says the Jinn. “That’s the type of Jinn I am. You’ll get anything you ask for, and he twice as much.”
"So," asks the farmer, “if I’ll ask for a mountain of diamonds he’ll get two mountains of diamonds?”
“Yes,” replies the Jinn, “whatever you’ll ask for will happen twice as much to him. Now consider well what you wish for. I see that you’re very poor, your family is hungry, and your children unhealthy. There’s a real opportunity for improvement here. You have only one wish, so use it wisely.
The farmer thinks a bit and says: “My wish is that you’ll blind me in one of my eyes.”
INTERPRETATIONS
The Hunters and the Pilot
I am reminded of this joke whenever people tell me how they did some things, saw that they harm them, and then did exactly the same things all over again getting, of course, the very same results. In many cases, there’s nothing mysterious in the ways people hurt themselves. It’s a simple cause and effect process. A move in a game of checkers is often more complicated. Press a button — there’s a red light. Do it again — again there'll be a red light. In order not to have a red light, don’t press the button. Sometimes political movements and nations, too, do what the pilot and the hunters did.
Waiting for a Child
The father was so busy with his overweight that he was certain that the lady was mocking him by asking sarcastically whether he was pregnant. I am reminded of this story whenever I see people building anger and hostility when they interpret others as criticizing, mocking, or just noticing aspects of their lives that they mind very much but others don’t mind or even notice at all.
Twice as Much to Your Neighbor
The farmer may seem crazy and, thus, the story may appear unrealistic, but I have met many divorcing couples who do exactly as the farmer did: they hate the other person so much that their satisfaction in hurting him or her is stronger than the sorrow for the harm they thereby inflict also on themselves and their families, or for the missed opportunity to improve their and their families lives. As long as the other party suffers even more they are satisfied that they have "won" in some perceived pain and destruction competition, and this satisfaction is more important to them than any suffering and destruction they cause to themselves and to others. What the farmer did is more common than we would like to think.
Sometimes when I read about political choices certain political parties and nations make again I think of that farmer. There’s so much that can and should be improved, sometimes urgently so. But frustrating the other party or nation appears, to some, to be so much more important.
