Two Disciples (A Short Story)

I sat on the floor at my mentor's feet for many months. As his disciple, I had a lifetime's worth of lessons to learn. My mentor taught me to be aggressive in both my dreams and my determination to realize them. I was taught to not cower or create excuses.

Through great personal and internal struggle, I had begun to truly learn. The first revelation was that I had very strongly believed so many things that were wrong. The world did not work the way I had thought, and my mentor knew that and worked to open my eyes to that fact.

After many months of training and studying, my mentor took on a new disciple. I still remained his disciple as well, but I had reached a level where I could identify and teach lessons to others that had not yet had their eyes opened.

I was excited at the new disciple's first lesson. It was going to be such an amazing experience to witness these lessons external to them. I would be neither the teacher nor the student, but the witness. Certainly I was welcome to chime in, and I admittedly was excited to show off that I knew all these lessons.

When the new disciple began the first lesson, the mentor taught him to calm down, take his time, and think his plans through before acting on them. This left me perplexed. Why was my mentor teaching completely opposite lessons to this other disciple?

After some time listening and pondering, I understood that he was teaching the same lesson, but using different techniques. He wants both of us to find the middle path, where we take the time to measure all of our options, and also take the action to make things happen. However, because his two disciples were such different people, he had to lead us through different paths to reach the same endpoint.

I came to my mentor as one who spent much time thinking, but was too afraid to act. The other disciple came to the mentor confident and brazen, but lacking focus and planning. We had to learn very different instruction, but we ultimately learned the same lessons.