The Frog in the Well 井底之蛙
Video link: to be added. (Placeholder — no published video URL in the source materials yet.)
The story
At the bottom of an old, broken well lived a frog. And he was certain he had the best life in the world.
I hop on the rim, I splash in my puddle, he boasted. No crab or tadpole is as happy as me. You should come down and see!
So a great turtle from the Eastern Sea tried. But before his right foot got in, his left knee was already stuck.
He backed out and said, the sea is so wide, a thousand miles can't measure it. Nine years of floods never raised it. Seven years of drought never lowered it.
The frog was stunned speechless. His whole world was just a circle of sky. How big is yours? Follow for more ancient stories.
What the original text says
Zhuangzi, Outer Chapters (外篇), Chapter 17, “Qiushui” (秋水, Autumn Floods). Key line: 子獨不聞夫埳井之蛙乎？謂東海之鱉曰：『吾樂與！……』
The narration above is a short adaptation. Read the fuller retelling.
A later interpretation
Lu Xixing (Ming) treats this mainly as vivid wording and glosses the words, saying the passage has “no especially deep meaning” (無甚深旨). Note that he reads 持頤 as the frog keeping its mouth shut, not as the water holding up its chin.
A modern reading (ours)
We all live in some well. Wisdom begins when we suspect the sky is bigger than the circle we can see.
Source
Zhuangzi, 'Autumn Floods' (Qiushui) chapter, c. 4th–3rd century BC. Retold in English; illustrations are AI-generated.