At a recent gathering Robert Kegan shared a Russian folktale worth repeating:

On a bitter cold winter day, on his way to chop wood, a woodsman came across a little bird almost frozen in the snow.  Despite his hurry to accomplish the task at hand, he just couldn't bring himself to leave the little bird to freeze to death, so he picked up the little bird and held it close to his chest to warm it.  As he stood there warming the little bird, he realized that his impulse to rescue the little bird now posed quite a dilemma: how was he going to get his wood chopped while holding a small bird in his hands?