It is told that long ago there was a city with a strange law. Every year, a different king from the previous one ruled it. The people of this city would choose this king and install him on the first day of each year. After his term ended, they would send him to a distant island to spend the rest of his life there. After that, they would choose another king, and so on.
When one of the kings finished his ruling period in the city, the people dressed him in the finest clothes and mounted him on a large elephant. They kept touring him throughout all parts of the city until he bid farewell to his people. That moment was one of the most difficult moments of sadness and pain for the king himself and all the kings who came before him.
After that, the people placed their previous king in a ship that cut through the sea to the distant island where kings were exiled, to spend the rest of his life there. When the ship returned to the city again, it discovered on its way the existence of a sunken ship. Among its wreckage was a young man wrestling with the waves. They rescued him and asked him to be their king for one year.
The young man refused at first, but he agreed after that. The people of the city informed him of that law prevailing there, that after a full year passed, he would be carried to that deserted island where they left the previous kings.
Three days after that young man assumed the kingdom’s throne, he asked the prime minister to see that island where kings were sent to. He took him and the soldiers, and they saw it. It was a dense forest covered with forests, inhabited by predatory animals that had been roaming there for a long time. When the king and his soldiers descended to the island’s land, they found the bodies of previous kings lying on the ground.
The king understood the story and knew that every king who reached the island’s land died there, attacked by predatory animals that killed him. The king then returned to his city and gathered a hundred strong workers. He took them with him to the island and ordered them to clean the forest, get rid of predatory animals, remove the bodies of animals and previous kings, and everything that disturbed the peace of life there.
The young king got used to visiting the island once every month to check on the progress of work and the island’s condition. The island appeared more beautiful day after day. Work progressed with quick steps. In a short time, the dense trees that prevented road paving were removed, and the bodies of kings and animals were disposed of by burying them, so the island became completely clean.
After that, the king ordered the workers to plant gardens and raise useful animals like ducks, chickens, and goats in all parts of the island. After a while, he ordered the workers to build a large house on that island and a dock for ships.
With the passage of time, the deserted island transformed into a beautiful city lacking only human presence. The young king was clever and intelligent. He wore the simplest clothes, the least extravagant, and spent nothing on his life and pleasures except what was little. He kept devoting all the money he saved to developing that island he would move to after the year passed.
After exactly nine months passed, the king gathered his ministers and informed them of his intention to leave, but they reminded him of the city’s law that he should spend the remaining three months before leaving. The king yielded to the law’s order. After the three months passed and the year was completed.
The king’s turn came to move to the distant island. The people of the city dressed him in the finest clothes and placed him on the large elephant, saying: Farewell, oh king. But the king was unlike the previous kings in that moment. Sadness didn’t disturb his face and change his features.
He was laughing and smiling. When people asked him about that, he answered that he remembered the saying of one of the wise when he said: You are born a child in this world, crying while everyone around you laughs. Live in this world and do what you see fit until death comes to you, then you laugh while everyone around you cries.
While the previous kings were occupied with the pleasure of power and money during their reign period, I was occupied with thinking about the future and planning for what my state would become. I repaired and developed the island until it became a small paradise on earth where I can live the rest of my life in peace. This worldly life is nothing but a farm for the hereafter; what we plant, we will harvest.