This unfamiliar Orwell also brings to mind a famous Buddhist parable about a person chased by a tiger who, in flight, stumbles over a cliff and grasps a small plant to prevent falling to her death. It’s a strawberry plant that is gradually becoming uprooted and will soon give way, and it has one beautifully ripe strawberry dangling from it. What, asks the parable, is the right thing to do at that moment, and the answer is to savor the berry. It’s a story suggesting that we are always mortal and might die sooner than we think: there are often tigers, there are sometimes strawberries.
