[Nelson Mandela] once recited for me the parable of the young Xhosa man who left his small village to search for a wife. He spent years traveling all around the world looking for the perfect woman, but did not find her. Eventually he came back to the village without a bride, and on his way in saw a woman and said, “Ah, I have found my wife.” It turns out, Mandela said, that she had lived in the hut next door to his all her life. I asked, “Is the moral of the story that you don’t need to wander far and wide to find what you are looking for because it is right in front of you? Or is it that sometimes you must have wide experience and knowledge in order to appreciate those things that are closest and most familiar to you?”
He thought about this for a moment, nodded, and then said, “There is no one interpretation. Both may be correct.”
— excerpt from “It’s Always Both,” Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage, by Richard Stengel. (Excellent book.)
Random aphorisms and commentary and things.