The Stone and the Storyteller: A Modern Myth

Once, a traveler found a smooth stone at a crossroads. An old woman said the stone would grant one clear change for its holder — not wealth, but a single truth revealed. The traveler pocketed it, thinking of lost chances and quiet regrets.

At the city’s edge, the traveler met a child who sold lanterns and knew the path of every alley. The child asked what the traveler would ask the stone. The traveler hesitated and then said: "Show me the life I did not choose." The child laughed and said the stone might be heavy with what we imagine.

When the traveler pressed the stone that night, images unfurled: a different house, different meals, different silences. Each scene offered small variations — friendships that took different shapes, work that was harder in ways that deepened skill, sorrow that taught sharper empathy. The traveler realized the imagined alternate life was not a single perfect thing but a weave of trade-offs.

By morning, the traveler returned the stone to the child. "What did you see?" asked the child. The traveler said, "Not a life to envy, but the truth that each life is shaped by the choices we do not see." The child tilted a lantern and offered a coin for a new story instead.

The myth asks a small question: is desire for an alternate life a door to understanding, or a distraction from attending this one? The storyteller’s craft is to turn temptation into curiosity, and curiosity into action. The stone remains at the crossroads, waiting for the next traveler who wants to know not what they missed, but what they might yet learn.