A man was walking home late one night when he saw Mullah Nasruddin on his hands and knees, searching under a street light for something on the ground.

“Mullah, what have you lost?” he asked.

“The key to my house,” Nasruddin said.

“I’ll help you look,” the man said.

Soon, both men were down on their knees, looking for the key.

After some time, the man asked: “Where exactly did you drop it?”

      
Nasruddin waved his arm back toward the darkness. “Over there, in my house.”

The man jumped up. “Then why are you looking for it here?”

“Because there is more light here than inside my house.”

Source: Tales of Mullah Nasruddin

Comment:
Though this seems just a funny tale, it has a much deeper meaning. Very often we look in the wrong place for our answers, only because that place is more convenient. This is particularly true of the mystery of life. ‘My house’ in this tale is a metaphor for ‘my inner self.” If our objective is to understand this mystery, the key to unlock it has to be found where it got lost, that is within our inner self, and not by external rituals.

Extract from Teaching stories : Small stories, big truths

Selected and interpreted by Jamuna Rangachari, Illustrations by Faraaz Tanveer