Where the Light Is

One evening, a neighbour found Mulla Nasruddin crawling about on his hands and knees in the street, under the lamp outside his house.

“What are you looking for, Mulla?” asked the neighbour.

“My key,” said Nasruddin. “I have lost the key to my house.”

“Oh dear. I'll help you look.” So the neighbour got down on his knees too, and they searched together. They looked between the stones and under the leaves and around the bottom of the lamp post. They found a button, a date stone and a very surprised beetle. They did not find a key.

Soon two more neighbours came along and joined in, and then a boy with a stick, and before long half the street was crawling about under the lamp.

At last the first neighbour sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead. “Mulla,” he said, “we have searched every inch of this street. Are you sure you dropped it here?”

“Oh no,” said Nasruddin. “I dropped it inside the house.”

Everyone stopped. “Inside the house?” cried the neighbour. “Then why in the world are we looking for it out here?”

Nasruddin looked at him as if the answer were perfectly obvious. “Because there is more light out here, of course.”

People have been laughing at that answer for six hundred years. But the next time you see someone searching for something in the easy place instead of the right place, you may find yourself thinking of Mulla Nasruddin and his key.