The train is forty minutes late. Daniel stands on the platform. Nothing bad has happened yet. But in his head, the day is already bad. He knows this feeling.
In his bag, Daniel has a small, very old book: the Dhammapada. Buddhists have read it for two thousand years. The first verse says: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
This does not mean: think good things and good things will come. The train will still be late.
It means: you do not choose what happens, but you choose how you meet it. A bad thought follows you like a wheel follows the ox. A good thought follows you like your shadow.
Daniel reads the verse. The train is still late. But the day is not bad anymore. It is only late.
Every Journeva story exists at four levels — same plot, same characters, richer language each step. Here is how this one begins at each level.
B1 · IntermediateThe train was forty minutes late, and Daniel could feel the day going bad in his head before anything had actually gone wrong. He knew the feeling well: it arrived with the first small problem and stayed for hours, and by the evening he usually could not remember what the problem had been, only that the day had been one of the bad ones. …
B2 · Upper intermediateThe train was forty minutes late, and Daniel could feel the day turning bad in his head before anything had actually gone wrong. He knew the feeling intimately: it arrived with the first small setback and settled in for hours, and by evening he usually could not have said what the setback had been, only that the day had belonged to the bad ones, as if the category had been decided at nine in the morning and everything afterwards had merely confirmed it. …
Read the whole story at A2, B1 and B2
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