The Rule That Had No Legs.

Once upon a time, there was a world where people argued for thousands of years about how to count.

Some said:

"First, add everything up, because that's how life works: what you get is added to it."

Others said:

"No. First, we need to understand how many times something happens, and then how it fits in with the others."

Philosophers, astronomers, priests, and even simple shepherds debated it.

The rule was born and changed, new peoples adopted it, other peoples abandoned it, but as time went by, the world didn't even notice that it had become a habit.

Like when a song is sung so many times that no one knows who wrote it.

One day, two men were sitting on an old wooden bench.

One man sat on the left, the other on the right—but the latter had no legs.

The lack was not painful for him, it was just a fact: he was born that way, and he had always lived that way.

The man on the left took out a piece of paper, wrote on it:

6 + 2 × 5

Then he said:

"See? This is how you have to count. This is the rule."

The man on the right smiled.

"A rule?" he asked quietly. "Or did someone just tell you to do it like that once?"

The man on the left thought about it.

"I have no idea. That's just how we learned."

"Interesting," said the man on the right. "I can't even walk, and yet they believe I know where to go.

Because sometimes people don't look at your feet, they look at the direction you're pointing.

And sometimes it's not the truth that counts, it's the fact that someone once said something… and enough people believed it."

The man on the left lowered his head.

"But then how do we know what's true?"

The man on the right pointed to the paper:

– The truth is not in how we calculate… but in whether we want to calculate the same thing.

A rule only lives as long as it makes sense.

When it no longer makes sense, a new rule is born.

The man on the left then understood:

It is not the lack that gives value, nor the usual laws.

It is that two people are trying to understand the same reality — even if they get there in different ways.

He looked at the paper:

– So there is no right or wrong answer?

The man on the right shook his head.

– There are only jointly agreed directions.

Mathematics, time, words — they are all just vibrations that people once harmonized.

And every rule lives as long as the world vibrates with it.

The man on the left smiled and tore the paper.

– Then from today on, it wasn't who  but with whom.

And a new law was born among those sitting on the bench:

it's not the order of the numbers that matters, but the order of the people who agree on what they mean.

The man on the right then looked up at the sky.

"See?" he said. "I don't have legs, but we're moving forward.

Because direction is always within, not in the rules."

And on that day, the world became a little quieter, but also a little more understandable.