Stone Soup
There's an old, well-worn story about a village, a stranger, and some soup.
Here's how it goes.
A stranger walks into a village after a hard season. He is tired and hungry. There is nobody about and all the doors of the village are closed.
Although hungry and tired, the stranger doesn't knock on any doors. He senses that this is not a place or a time to seek alms. After a long pause, he walks to the square, gathers some twigs for a fire, fills a pot with water, and drops in a single smooth stone.
Then he waits. The fire warms him.
Behind closed doors and window curtains, the stranger has attracted attention. People are watching. Some are curious. But mostly people are busy.
But someone is tired of the same thin meal, night after night — and tired of knowing exactly how it tastes. They stop watching. They open the door, walk down to the fire, and ask the stranger what he's making.
"Making soup," he says.
But inside the pot — water, one stone, nothing else. "That's not soup."
"Of course it is," he says. "It's stone soup — have you ever tried it? It's not finished. Do you have anything you could add to it?"
Truthfully? They didn't have much. Just a few carrots. Barely enough for their own family.
Word travels fast in a small village. Someone else comes to look, sees the carrots, and figures a few onions wouldn't hurt either. Someone else has a bit of meat on an old bone. Someone has potatoes. Someone has salt.
No one gives everything they have, no one is asked to, each person adds only what they can spare.
By evening, the whole village is gathered in the square, bowls in hand, eating a soup that no single person could have made — and that everyone made together.
That's the story.
I think it's our story, but we've forgotten it. In a consumer world, everything is a transaction — a fair exchange, tit for tat — and we always know exactly how it's going to taste. Because it's missing the most important ingredients.