Once there was a King who lived in a big and affluent country. He was very fond of traveling, but did not like to travel around his own country. He, instead, went across other countries quite often. One day, he brought together his entire army to go to a distant country for a holiday.

As they were travelling, the King and his soldiers walked the entire morning in the forest. Later, they decided to take some rest, and hence, went to their camps. Just like the King and his men, the horses were also tired, and so, they were given peas as their food.

A monkey, who lived in that forest, was observing everything from a distance. When he saw that the king’s men offered peas to the horses, he jumped from the tree to collect some of them. Somehow, he managed to get some of the peas and filled his mouth and hands with them. Then, he climbed the tree and sat at a place to eat the peas.

The moment he sat to eat the peas, one of the peas fell from his hand to the ground. The monkey was very greedy. Looking at the loss of one pea, he decided to find it and dropped all the peas he had in his hands. He got to the ground, but could not find that particular pea. He became sad and went to the tree again, thinking that just to get one pea, he lost all of the peas that he had.

The King was looking at the monkey and his actions from his camp. He thought that he would treat this as a lesson and would not act like the foolish monkey, whose greed led him to nothing. He decided to go back to his own country and enjoy what he has been blessed with. Thence, the King and his men returned to their own country happily.

Moral of the story: Do not let the greed of what you don’t have, make you lose things that you have.