What are we busy doing?

CAN WE COMPETE WITH NATURE?

There was a man who spent three years sculpting a piece of jade into a leaf. He presented his masterpiece to a prince who was very impressed by it and became his patron.

The leaf looked so real that if you placed it among real leaves you could not tell the difference. Everyone remarked that it was a very beautiful piece of art.

However, when Lieh-Tzu heard about this he quipped,

“If nature took three years to make a leaf, then we’d be in trouble.”

Thus, the sage knows that no matter how we try to imitate the works of nature, nature still does a better job.