One Smart Psychiatric Patient

The old Woodbridge Hospital in Singapore was very big and each of the ward has a large compound where patients can do gardening and farming to occupy their time.

One day a senior consultant gave every patients some papaya seeds and asked them to go and plant them in the compound. Some of the patients ate up the seeds. Most of them did the usual things we expect them to do. They dug holes in the compound and placed the seeds inside before covering them with soils.

There was one patient who did something very unusual and this got all the doctors and patients talking about it for many months.

He spent one whole day to dig a hole that is almost 1 meter deep. He then jumped into the deep hole and carefully planted his seeds inside.

The senior consultant decided to ask him why he did such an unusual thing.

He said, “I always plan ahead of time. I work hard now so that I don’t have to work so hard in the future when the tree bears papayas. I just need to squat down to pluck the fruit.”

Now that is one smart psychiatric patient!