So why did the chicken cross the road? You may have heard it was to get to the other side. Why has this seemingly innocuous riddle been passed down through generations, spread across nations and been translated into many other languages? It is not even funny.

Perhaps the appeal is in its simplicity. Every country has chickens and roads, and every person has a desire to get to the other side. The simplicity of this idea appears as a calming agent to our brains that constantly over analyzes and complicates matters beyond the recognition that getting to the other side is all about taking one step at a time whether you have chicken feet or otherwise.

The reality of having goals and dream, ambitions and aspirations alongside the advancement in technology and the accessibility of knowledge has put us in a place where we have turned getting to the other side of the road by putting one foot after another to stagnantly hovering in one place contemplating the different paths and methods of transportation and ultimately reaching nowhere.

In 1847, the first written record of the riddle published in ‘The Knickerbocker’ (a New York monthly literary magazine) was perhaps written to poke fun at overly elaborate literary riddles that were common at the time. It goes to show that as much as society changes and expands, it also stays the same. Man’s insistence on overcomplication being called out by the simplicity of a riddle that 5-year-old children find hilarious pricks at our intellect as we navigate a world where we are always striving to get somewhere.

As we live our lives with intention and purpose, let’s continue to keep the chicken in mind and take one step at a time to get to the other side.