Crackers and soup are a lunch that is comforting and warm.

Crackers means mad. Soup means liquid with some nourishment. Lunch means middle of the day meal.

Mad means angry. Liquid means anything that flows. Middle means halfway between two other things.

Angry means disturbed at another person or even one’s self. Flow means a smooth movement from one place to the next. Between means there is something on either side.

So: Crackers and soup are a lunch = Disturbed movement with something on either side.

This weird sequence of word associations is not dissimilar to bad translations from one language to another. Translation difficulties are exacerbated because there are some words in every language which have no corresponding word in other languages. A language grows organically from and along with a developing culture, so it reflects and perpetuates the values of the culture. This is why it’s difficult to truly understand a people, a nation, unless you speak their language. And in times of conflict, deliberate misreadings and propaganda lead to even greater loss of understanding.

“Open sesame,” said the thief, but the cave did not open. He sat outside pondering his options. The treasure he wanted was inside the cave and he was outside the cave. Either he had to be able to get in, or the treasure had to come out. What to do? He could blow up the cave entrance – a huge impenetrable door – but that would surely destroy some of the treasure. He could hire many men to dig a new entrance, but then they would no doubt steal the treasure just as soon as they saw it. The thief felt really blocked; there seemed to be no solution.

All at once a tiny mouse scurried out of a little hole near the bottom of the cave door. It was holding in its front teeth a ruby the size of a large breadcrumb. Quick as a flash, the thief caught the mouse and grabbed the ruby. “How unfair it is,” he thought, “that this stupid little mouse should be able to get into the cave while I can not.” The mouse thought, “How unfair it is that there should be so many stupid rocks in the way of my nest, and that this giant monster should be holding onto my tail. Ouch.”

The thief sat holding onto the mouse’s poor tail. He wondered how he could use the mouse to get at the riches in the cave. But even if he could train it to bring the jewels and coins out, it would take forever to get all the treasure. He could use a whole army of mice.

The mouse opened his mouth and emitted a squeak. By some miracle, the thief understood the mouse to say, “Let me go.” The thief said, “I can’t let you go until I’m sure I have no use for you.” By some miracle, the mouse understood the thief to say, “Make a bargain with the devil and you will rue the day you made it.” The mouse squeaked again, and the man heard, “What can I do for you, great master?” The thief said, “Get me some more of these jewels.”

“What’s a jewel?” squeaked the mouse. “This is a jewel,” said the thief, holding up the red rock.

“It’s just a rock,” thought the mouse, “and I have to get rid of the stupid rocks anyway, so why not?” He squeaked his agreement, and the man let him go.

The mouse scurried back into the cave while the man sat gloomily staring at the big keyhole in the door of the cave. He tried for a while to pick the lock with an old bone, but had no success. The mouse went back and forth bringing out rubies for two whole days, until he finally squeaked, “No more red stones.”

”Are there green stones?” asked the thief. “Yes. Green stones. I will bring them. But I’m hungry,” said the mouse. The thief gave him a little crust of bread, which the mouse pushed back into the cave. The thief sat outside rubbing his hands at the thought of emeralds, and sure enough, for another whole week the pile of emeralds grew.

There was one day, however, when the mouse did not appear, because she was having her babies. On the next day she resumed clearing out the green stones, and then the blue stones. After a while she taught her little ones to drag stones, and then they taught their little ones. The thief was forced to feed his entire labor force, so from time to time he covered up his loot with bushes and branches to hide it, and went away for more supplies.

Even with so many mice, the job took dozens of years to finish because the treasure was immense beyond imagining. There were round orange things and square purple things and flat golden things and things with little marks around the edges. There were things that were joined together by string. There were silver things and bright clear things that flashed in the sun, and there were colored things stuck to round golden things.

So many years went by, indeed, that the thief grew older and older. His hair turned gray and his joints got stiff. His only companions were the mice, and few of them could speak his language. He never learned to speak mouse properly because he was too busy counting the colored things. And he kept losing count and having to start over again, which took forever. He seldom slept for fear of thieves like himself who might want to do what he would do if he were they.

Finally one day when the thief was very old, a great-to-the-power-of-53 grandson of the original mouse came out of the cave with nothing in his mouth. “We have finished all the round smooth white things, master. What should we bring now?”

Try as he might, the man could not imagine what could be left in the cave. He had all the emeralds, pearls, diamonds, gold, crystals, rings, necklaces, ornaments, rubies, turquoises, garnets, peridots and so on. He was almost weary of looking at them and counting them. And he realized that he had let his whole life go by without being able to enjoy even the littlest part of his enormous wealth. If only he could have entered the cave himself so many years ago!!!

At last he said to the mouse, “Bring me whatever’s left, then.”

The mouse reappeared after a few minutes dragging something heavy and unevenly shaped that glinted dully in the sun. “Here, master,” he said, flopping down in exhaustion. “There’s just this one thing you never asked for, and it’s been in our way forever. We were always having to drag your things over and around it.”

And there on the ground was the thing the thief had never thought to ask for – the big key to the lock on the cave door.

To say that the thief was unable to understand his true need would be understating the case. What kind of man could imagine that he knew what he needed when he was so foolish as not even to realize that he needed the key first?

We all need the key. First and foremost we need the key of understanding to unlock the treasures in our own lives. We are mysteries to ourselves – puzzles, mazes, locks and bars. Our treasures are hidden inside, rarely looked for and seldom found. But unlike the thief, these treasures, these keys, are our own. We can use our own inner explorations to go back and forth seeking what is valuable. Our inner selves are well aware that jewels, gold and other wealth are largely just colored stones that get in the way of building what we really need. Our inner selves see the key inside every day and wonder why we don’t ask for it.

If we seek the key to what is important – if we do that FIRST – we will not spend our entire lives waiting outside our own locked doors for someone else to make us rich.

It’s hard to communicate with our inner selves. At first, we’re lucky if we can even hear a squeak, let alone something intelligible. We need to talk to ourselves about what we want and need, for we cannot assume that we know this. Without self-examination it’s almost certain that we do not know.

The language of the Self is not one that we are taught to speak. Each person must learn it for himself or herself. Only then can the treasure be found in time to truly enrich this life.

And the understanding of this inner self is a prerequisite to understanding others. Not until you know your own language is there any point in learning another, because it you don’t know your own, all your translations will be utterly flawed. You will think that someone is speaking of treasure when they are only speaking of stones.