In a meadow, in the bright high summer, there lived a grasshopper and an ant.
The grasshopper sang. The grasshopper had a fine voice, and the summer was long, and there was nothing much to do but sit on a stone and sing in the warm afternoon. He sang from morning to evening. He sang in the mornings when the dew was still on the grass, and he sang in the evenings when the sun was going down behind the hills.
The ant did not sing. The ant carried.
She carried small grains of wheat. She carried small seeds. She carried small crumbs of bread that she found by the edge of the path. She carried them, one at a time, all summer long, into a hole in the ground beneath a stone.
The grasshopper saw her carrying.
"Why are you working so hard?" he asked. "It is summer. The sun is warm. There is plenty of food. Sit with me. Sing."
"I am preparing," said the ant.
"Preparing for what?"
"For winter."
The grasshopper laughed. "Winter is a long way off. Why think about it now?"
The ant did not answer. She carried another grain. The grasshopper went back to his singing.
The summer was long. But the summer ended.
The leaves came down off the trees. The grass turned brown. The cold came. The food was gone.
The grasshopper had no food. He had not gathered any. He had not thought he would need to.
He came, very slowly, to the ant's hole. He knocked.
The ant came out. She was warm and well-fed. She had been singing too, in her own way, all the long warm days. Her singing had just looked like carrying.
"I am hungry," said the grasshopper.
The ant looked at him for a long time. She thought about what to say. In the end, she did not lecture him. She did not turn him away.
She gave him some food. She gave him a place to sit, near her fire.
"Next summer," said the ant, "sing if you like. But carry, too. The cold comes. The cold always comes. It is not a punishment. It is just the next season. You can be ready for it, if you want to be."
The grasshopper ate his food. He thought about this for a long time. The next summer, when it came, he sang less, and he carried more. He still sang. He still had a fine voice. But he was warm in the winter that came after, because he had been carrying all along.
This is one of the most extraordinary things in the whole library. Solomon and Aesop were watching the same ant. They lived in different countries. They spoke different languages. They wrote hundreds of years apart. And they both looked at the same small creature, carrying her grain, and they both said: this is wisdom. Look at her. Learn.
Solomon went further. He said the ant has no boss. Nobody is making her carry. She just carries, because she knows winter is coming, and because the only person who can prepare for her winter is her.
The grasshopper had a fine voice and no plan. The ant had no song and a hole full of food. By the next year, the grasshopper had learned to do both.
What winter is coming, that you could prepare for now, one grain at a time?