I came across this parable recently and it stuck with me. The attribution is disputed – some say it was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer on his deathbed, others point to an Anglican bishop, and some claim it’s simply anonymous folklore that’s been circulating for decades. The origin doesn’t matter much. What matters is the shape of the thing.
When I was young, free, and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.
As I grew older and wiser, I realised the world would not change. So I shortened my sights and decided to change only my country. But it too seemed immovable.
As I entered my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I sought to change only my family, those closest to me – but they would have none of it.
And now here I lie on my deathbed and realise, perhaps for the first time, that if I had changed myself first, then by example I might have influenced my family, and with their encouragement and support I might have bettered my country, and who knows – I might have changed the world.
The version I’ve seen floating around the internet always ends with a little tail: “But alas, the world and everyone is too selfish.” As if that saves the point. As if blaming everyone else absolves the narrator of the actual lesson. It reads like someone couldn’t resist undercutting the whole thing at the last second, like a comedian who tells a genuinely good joke and then explains it.
The parable works without that. The tragedy is in the realisation arriving too late, not in the world being to blame. You don’t need the moral handed to you on a plate – you can feel it yourself.