So, you go to the railway station, and when you get there, there are lots of trains at different platforms, so you pick one and board it, but to your horror you discover it's a runaway train and can't stop. It crashes into the buffers at another station, way further than you intended to go, and you're slightly injured. But no fear! It was just a runaway train. So you try again, go to the station, and board a different one. This one turns out to be a runaway train, too, but, after a nail-biting few hours, it gradually slows to a stop because of a gradient in the line. Relieved, you try again, and, this time, the train is a perfectly ordinary train, and arrives on schedule: no problems. The brakes work on this one. Thinking you were silly to discern the hand of fate in a run of bad luck, you go to the railway station again, but today's train is indeed another runaway train, and this time it tumbles down a ravine and you break multiple bones. On discharge, you decide to take the train back from the hospital, and, still suffering from multiple fractures, another runaway train takes you on an unexpected trip round the country. This must be really, really bad luck, you think, because, every day, almost every train arrives at its proper destination without incident. The problem just seems to be with the trains you happen to board. That makes no sense, though. It's not just the intercity trains, the suburban trains, the underground trains, the international trains. It could be any of them or none of them. There's no discernable pattern. The worst aspect: it's happening more and more often, and incidents are becoming ever graver. You're baffled and dejected.
One day, on the way back out of the train station after another hair-raising adventure, a gentleman approaches you and asks if you can help him. He would like to tell his story, just for a few minutes, and it will save him from getting on a runaway train. You see some of the scars on his face, and it would be heartless indeed to refuse. So you listen. And he tells you the strangest story. He says: the problem is not the trains. It's the passengers who are the problem. There are certain travellers who actually cause the trains to become runaway trains. These people are attracted to each other, so, on any given runaway train, the passengers will largely comprise a lot of people with this difficulty. They always take a few others along with them who suffer because of the runaway train through no apparent fault of their own. There are those, too, who, curiously, are actually attracted to the runaway-train people. They're just as bashed up and baffled as the runaway-train people themselves. Anyway, here is the bad news: you cannot board a train, as you currently are, without it becoming a runaway train. This information would be sufficient to avoid disaster, except for two reasons. Firstly, it is no good trying to avoid trains altogether: after all, travel is unavoidable. Secondly, and more alarmingly, such people seem strangely obsessed with trying to solve this problem head-on. Some just want the trains they board to be normal. Others quite like the runaway train adventures, except when they go literally off the rails. But either way: they think there's some way of figuring out which train is going to be safe today, and that there's a way of balancing risk and reward. Unfortunately, he goes on to relate, this heartbreaking obsession is both deadly and incurable.
Deadly? Incurable? 'Why aren't
you dead yet?', our friend joshes the gentleman. 'Well,' says the gentleman. 'There
is actually a solution.' He goes onto explain a programme of actions that have
nothing to do with trains, which rearrange the psyche, the mind, of the
individual. And then, provided that the individual maintains a few daily
habits, he can go to any train station in the world and get on any train, and it
will always arrive at its proper destination. You see, the problem lies 100% in
the individuals. It's not and was never about the trains.