 A young prince suffered a severe mental breakdown and became convinced he was a turkey. He stripped off his clothes, sat under the royal dining table, and refused to eat anything except pecking at bones and grain on the floor.
The king and queen were devastated, and all the royal physicians failed to cure him. Eventually, a wise sage arrived and decided to take a different approach. Instead of trying to convince the prince he was wrong, the sage took off his own clothes, crawled under the table, and joined the prince in pecking at the floor.
Startled, the prince asked, “What are you doing here?”
The sage replied, “I’m a turkey. What are you doing?”
They sat together and bonded as “turkeys” for a few days. Once the prince trusted the sage completely, the sage slowly began to wear regular shirts over his bare chest.
“Are you crazy?” asked the prince. “Turkeys don’t wear shirts!”
“Oh, but turkeys can wear shirts,” the sage replied. “It won’t make you any less of a turkey.”
The prince agreed to put on a shirt. Over the next few weeks, the sage continued this process—persuading the prince to wear pants, eat human food at the table, and eventually sit on a proper chair. Slowly but surely, by entering the prince’s delusion rather than shaming him, the sage led him back to full sanity and his former life. |
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