A Children’s Story for Grown-Ups
A fable about what happened when serious-looking people arrived in an idyllic spot where people from different lands lived together in harmony.
First published September 2025
Once upon a time, in a beautiful valley where golden sunlight danced through ancient trees, there lived a community of people who had spent fifty years learning to live together in harmony. They called their home Shining Valley, and it was filled with gardens, workshops, schools, and cozy homes that seemed to grow naturally from the red earth itself.
The people of Shining Valley had learned many wonderful things over the years. They knew how to make bread that tasted like sunshine, how to grow vegetables without harming the soil, and how to make beautiful music together even though they came from many different lands and spoke different languages.
The Arrival of the Holy Fools
One day, a group of very serious-looking people arrived in Shining Valley. They wore long, flowing robes that they claimed were “sacred garments” and carried big books filled with complicated rules. They called themselves the Holy Fools, though the valley people thought they seemed more foolish than holy.
“We have come to save you!” announced their leader, a tall man with a very important-looking hat. “We can see that you have been doing everything wrong for fifty years. But don’t worry – we know exactly how to fix everything!”
The Holy Fools had read many books about the wise founders of Shining Valley, and they were absolutely certain they understood everything better than anyone else – even better than the people who had actually lived there all these years!
“The founders wanted perfection” they declared. “And we shall give you perfection!”
The valley people were puzzled. “But the founders taught us that perfection grows slowly, like a tree,” they said. “They taught us to listen to the land, to work together, to let things develop naturally.”
“Nonsense!” scoffed the Holy Fools. “That’s much too slow! We have plans! We have diagrams! We have VERY IMPORTANT IDEAS!”
The Grand Projects Begin
The first thing the Holy Fools decided to do was build the most perfectly straight road the world had ever seen. It would cut right through the middle of the valley, they announced, and it would be exactly the same width everywhere, with no curves or bends.
“But that will mean cutting down the Old Oak Grove,” said the valley people. “Those trees have been growing for a hundred years. The children love to play there, and the birds build their nests in the branches.”
“Trees can be replaced!” declared the Holy Fools. “But a perfectly straight road is forever!”
So they brought in enormous machines and began cutting down the ancient trees. The Holy Fools stood around in their robes, pointing at papers and nodding wisely, looking very pleased with themselves.
But there was a problem. The Holy Fools had never actually built a road before. They had read about roads in books, and they had drawn pictures of roads on paper, but they had never gotten their hands dirty actually making one.
Within a week, their perfectly straight road had become a muddy mess. The big machines got stuck because the Holy Fools had forgotten that the valley got very rainy in the monsoon season. The workers they had hired quit because the Holy Fools kept changing their minds about which direction the road should go. And worst of all, all that mud flowed down into the village wells, making the water taste terrible.
“Don’t worry!” said the Holy Fools, adjusting their important hats. “This is all part of our grand plan! The road will be even MORE perfect now!”
The Sacred Administrative Building
Next, the Holy Fools decided they needed a magnificent building to conduct their holy work. It would be the tallest building in the valley, they announced, with golden domes and marble columns and statues of themselves in the entrance hall.
“But we already have a meeting hall,” said the valley people. “It’s simple and beautiful, and everyone fits comfortably inside.”
“That old thing?” sniffed the Holy Fools. “It’s far too humble! We need something that shows our divine authority!”
So they began building their magnificent administrative building. They hired the most expensive architects from far-away cities, imported the finest marble from distant quarries, and installed the most complicated mechanical systems anyone had ever seen.
But once again, things went hilariously wrong. The Holy Fools couldn’t agree on how tall the building should be, so they kept adding more floors until it looked like a wobbly tower of blocks. The golden domes were so heavy that they crashed through the roof during the first storm. And the complicated heating system broke down immediately because nobody knew how to fix it.
“This is all working perfectly!” insisted the Holy Fools, shivering in their cold, leaky building. “This is exactly what the founders would have wanted!”
The Festival of Holy Incompetence
At first, the people of Shining Valley were afraid of the Holy Fools. They seemed so sure of themselves, so loud and authoritative. They had big machines and important-sounding titles and documents with official seals.
But as time went on, something began to change. The valley people started to giggle when they walked past the muddy road project. They began to chuckle when they saw the wobbly administrative building swaying in the wind. And when the Holy Fools announced their next grand project – a “Sacred Flying Machine” that was supposed to carry important messages but couldn’t even get off the ground – the children burst into delighted laughter.
“Look!” whispered one child to another. “They’re not scary at all! They’re just… silly!”
And it was true. For all their serious robes and important hats and big words, the Holy Fools were really just people who had read lots of books but never learned how to actually do anything. They could draw beautiful diagrams, but they couldn’t build a birdhouse. They could give magnificent speeches, but they couldn’t grow a tomato. They knew all the rules, but they had forgotten how to listen.
The Children’s Wisdom
The children of Shining Valley, who had grown up learning practical things alongside book learning, began to see something that the adults had missed. The Holy Fools weren’t evil – they were just confused. They really did want to help, but they had gotten so caught up in their big ideas that they had forgotten about the simple, real things that actually mattered.
“Maybe,” suggested one brave little girl, “instead of being angry at them, we could teach them?”
“Teach them what?” asked her mother.
“How to plant a seed,” said the girl. “How to bake bread. How to fix a leaky roof. You know – real things.”
Some of the older valley people shook their heads. “They would never listen,” they said. “They think they already know everything.”
But the children had an idea. They decided to invite the Holy Fools to their “Festival of Simple Things” – a celebration where everyone shared the basic skills that made life in the valley work. There would be bread baking and garden planting and storytelling and music making.
The Turning
To everyone’s surprise, some of the younger Holy Fools came to the festival. They were tired of living in the cold, leaky administrative building and eating food that came from far-away places in boxes. They were curious about how the valley bread could taste so much better than their official ceremonial wafers.
“Could you… could you teach me how to knead dough?” one of them asked shyly, taking off his ceremonial hat.
“Of course!” said the valley baker, delighted. “But you’ll need to roll up those fancy sleeves.”
As the young Holy Fool worked the dough with his hands, something wonderful began to happen. His serious frown melted away. His shoulders relaxed. And when the bread came out of the oven, golden and fragrant, his eyes filled with tears of joy.
“I never knew,” he whispered. “I never knew it could feel like this – to make something real, something useful, something beautiful.”
The Great Lesson
Not all of the Holy Fools learned this lesson. Their leader, the one with the most important hat, continued to insist that his failed projects were actually great successes. He kept drawing new diagrams and making new speeches and blaming everyone else when things went wrong.
But many of the others began to understand something important: that true wisdom comes not from books alone, but from the marriage of knowledge and experience, of grand visions and gentle hands.
Some of them took off their ceremonial robes and picked up gardening tools. Others began learning traditional crafts from the valley artisans. A few discovered they had talents for music or cooking or teaching children that they had never known they possessed.
The New Understanding
The valley people welcomed these reformed Holy Fools with open arms, but they had learned something even more important: they realized that they themselves had invited this crisis by seeking outside authority and protection instead of trusting in what they had already built together.
“We thought we needed their approval, their official recognition,” reflected one of the village founders. “But we forgot that our real protection comes from Life itself, from the living community we’ve nurtured, from the bonds we’ve woven through decades of shared work and dreams.”
This realization was like waking up from a strange dream. The valley people saw clearly now that their strength had never come from official documents or important buildings, but from their daily care for each other and the land, from their ability to create beauty and meaning together, from their deep roots in something far more ancient and reliable than any human authority.
The muddy road was never finished, and wildflowers eventually grew over the abandoned machinery. The wobbly administrative building became a wonderful playground for children, who loved climbing through its maze of broken staircases and hidden rooms. And the Sacred Flying Machine made an excellent chicken coop.
But the real magic happened when the former Holy Fools helped the valley people see themselves with new eyes. Through the outsiders’ fresh perspective, the valley people began to recognize the extraordinary nature of what they had quietly created over fifty years – innovations in education and sustainable living that the outside world desperately needed to learn about.
“We thought we were just living simply,” marveled one valley elder, “but you’ve helped us see that our children’s school, our water systems, our way of growing food – these aren’t just local solutions. They’re answers to problems the whole world is struggling with.”
The reformed Holy Fools, humbled by their failures, became bridges between the valley and the outer world, helping to share the valley’s wisdom far and wide. But more importantly, this experience taught the valley people a crucial lesson: they had unknowingly invited this crisis upon themselves by seeking outside protection and authority when they already possessed everything they needed within their own community and in their connection to Life itself.
As for the leader with the important hat, he continued to pace around his cold office, muttering about ungrateful people and failed experiments. But everyone else had learned to simply smile and nod when he made his speeches, then go back to the real work of building a community based on love instead of rules, on listening instead of lecturing, on growing things instead of controlling them.
The Moral of the Story
And what did the children of Shining Valley learn from all this? They learned that the most dangerous fools are those who think they are wise, and the most ridiculous tyrants are those who dress up their ignorance in holy robes.
But they also learned that laughter is stronger than fear, that kindness can transform even the most confused hearts, and that real wisdom always begins with the simple willingness to get your hands dirty and learn something new.
As the wise founders had taught them long ago: “The truth must be lived, not just proclaimed. And the most perfect plans are useless if they cannot grow a single flower or bake a single loaf of bread or bring a single moment of genuine happiness to a child’s heart.”
And in Shining Valley, the flowers bloomed, the bread rose, and the children’s laughter rang out clear and true, carrying on the breeze a message that no amount of official proclamations could silence: that love is always stronger than law, and that the greatest teachers are often the smallest seeds, growing quietly in the good earth of an open heart.
The End
By anonymous
Author’s note: Any resemblance to current events or persons, living or mythological, is purely coincidental and exists only in the reader’s imagination.
Originally published September, 2025 online in Substack