Digging Dirt, Digging Holes | Mullah Nasruddin Books by Ron J. Suresha

Digging Dirt, Digging Holes

One day, young Nasruddin went into his backyard and started digging a hole. He was getting fairly deep when his friend, Hussein, happened to stop by and ask what he was doing.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Nasruddin as he kept shoveling. “You see that huge pile of rubble left over from the repairs to the roof of my house? Nobody seems to know what to do what all that material, so I am digging a hole where I can bury all of it.”

“But Nasruddin,” Hussein asked, “where do you plan to put the dirt from this hole?”

“I’ll dig another hole,” said Nasruddin, shoveling away, “and put that dirt in there.”

“You’re going to remove the dirt from one hole and dump it into another hole? And what will you do with the dirt from the second hole?”

“Oh please, give me a break,” wheezed Nasruddin. “You can’t possibly expect me to have worked out every last little detail, do you?”

We often think we will eliminate our problems by acting out some desire to achieve some random solution, but often enough we end up not only not fixing the problem, but compounding our mess into an even bigger, nastier pile of dirt. All we have actually accomplished is to have soiled and embroiled ourselves thoroughly in the service of some vague or unknown objective, possibly having ruined our backs in the process.

When you stand up, drop the spade, and step out of whatever you’ve dug yourself into, however deep, and start to clean yourself up, you begin to see that creating and living in muddy holes is no way to live.