In a busy river town there once lived a merchant named Dhanapati, and his courtyard was the most crowded place in the whole region. Camels knelt at one gate while boats unloaded at the other. Sacks of pepper leaned against bales of silk; stacks of copper pots towered beside baskets of pearls. Servants ran in every direction, and Dhanapati ran fastest of all.

"Begin the new warehouse!" he cried to one man. "Buy the eastern orchard!" he cried to another. "Send ships to the southern ports! No — also the northern! And start the spice trade, and the salt trade, and build me a second house, bigger than the first!"

He had more gold than he could ever count, yet his hand was always reaching for more. He had a hundred tasks half-finished, and could not rest until he had begun a hundred more. At night he lay awake, his mind racing through deals and plans, unable to grow calm even for a moment. Whatever he had, he longed for the thing just beyond it.

A quiet old trader, who had known Dhanapati's father, came to visit and sat in the whirling courtyard, watching.

"My friend," the old trader said at last, "may I tell you what I see?"

"Quickly, quickly," said Dhanapati, already glancing at a passing cart.

"I see five guests living in your heart," said the old man. "Greed, who always wants more. Busyness, who can never sit. New-Beginnings, who starts what he will not finish. Restlessness, who steals your sleep. And Longing, who reaches for what is not yet yours. These five came in together, all at once, when the racing quality grew strong in you. They are not wicked. But they are loud, and they have filled the house so full that there is no quiet room left for you."

Dhanapati paused — truly paused — for the first time in years. In the sudden stillness he heard the five guests clamouring inside him, and for a single breath he saw them clearly, and was amazed at how crowded his own heart had become.