The North Wind and The Sun

18 Feb 2010 4 Comments

by Clare Macnaughton in Blogging, Immediate Response, Opinion, Rambling nonsense Tags: And Mean It, Bovvered, North Wind The Sun Aesop Ladybird Bully kindness Just Say Sorry Ask Nicely

When I was 7 years young, I loved my book, A First Book of Aesop’s Fables, published by Ladybird. I read it again and again. The lead fable; the fabulous unforgettable opener was The North Wind and The Sun.

The fable is centred around a competition between the North Wind and the Sun to decide who was the stronger of the two. The challenge was set to make a passing traveler remove his cloak. However, hard the North Wind blew at the traveler, the traveler only wrapped his cloak tighter, but when it was the Sun’s turn, and the Sun shone, the traveler was overcome with heat and had to take his cloak off.

The moral of the story is:

“Persuasion is better than force.“

“Kindness, gentleness, and persuasion win where force fails. “

At the moment, I can’t help thinking of this fable. Somebody wants me to do something for them, that I am not legally obliged to do. I am not saying that I won’t do it. They like the North wind have bullied me, and I, like the traveler, have resisted. The question is do they have the Sun in them? Can they apologise for their mean, bullying ways, and ask me nicely if I will do what they want me to do?  Are they big enough to do that? My granny has always said to me, “good manners don’t cost anything.”  Or, in the immortal words of the comedy legend, Catharine Tate’s character, Lauren Cooper, ‘Am I bovvered? “Look at my face, is my face bovvered? Face? Bovvered?”

I love Catherine Tate. She is hilarious!