Number of words – 134

An olive-oil vendor returns from the marketplace and complains to a friend, “I can’t make money selling olive oil! By the times I feed the donkey that caries my oil to market, most of my profit is gone.” His friend suggests he feed the donkey a little less. Six weeks later they meet again at the marketplace. The oil seller is in poor shape, with neither money nor donkeys. When his friend asks what happened, the vendor replies. “Well, I did as you said. I fed the donkey a little less, and I began to do really well. So I fed him even less, and even better. But just at the point where I was becoming really successful, he died!”

Excerpted from Page 89 of ‘Cradle to Cradle’ by Michal Braungart and William McDonough