As a young man, the emperor travelled from castle to castle to get to know his country and his people. Above the doorway of one castle he saw the motto saying: “We know no worries!”, which he found most interesting. He asked the knights living in the castle if it was true that they knew no worries, while he, the emperor of the whole country, knew nothing but worries. They confirmed that the motto was correct but could not explain why. In order to find out how they did it, he asked them the following three questions to be answered by the time he returned in three days.
“How deep is the sea? How long does it take to travel to heaven? How far apart is happiness from unhappiness?” Over the next days the knights tried to find suitable answers but couldn’t. Even the priest of the castle chapel, who was a very well educated man, didn’t know the answers.
In desperation they even asked their herdsman, who happened to pass by with his animals. To their surprise he actually thought that the questions were very easy to answer. In order not to embarrass themselves, they dressed the herdsman in the priest’s clothes and told him to give his answers to the emperor. When the big moment came and the emperor asked for the answers to his questions, the herdsman stepped forward and said:
“The sea is a stone’s throw deep. It takes only a day to reach heaven, because there is only one Ascension Day. Happiness is very close to unhappiness, because today I stand as a priest in front of you whereas yesterday I was only a lowly herdsman!”
The emperor was so impressed with these answers that he told the knights to raise the herdsman’s living standard to that of a priest from now on.
