Dust If You Must
Dust If You Must
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Thinking matters.
Many years ago in a small Indian village, A farmer had the misfortune Of owing a large sum of money to a village moneylender. The Moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the farmer’s beautiful Daughter. So he proposed a bargain.
He said he would forgo the farmer’s debt if he could marry his Daughter. Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the Proposal. So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let Providence decide the matter.
He told them that he would put a black Pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag. Then the girl would Have to pick one pebble from the bag.
1) If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven.
2) If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven.
3) But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into Jail.
They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the farmer’s field. As They talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he Picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two Black pebbles and put them into the bag.
He then asked the girl to pick A pebble from the bag.
Now, imagine that you were standing in the field. What would you have Done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you Have told her?
Careful analysis would produce three possibilities:
1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble.
2. The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag And expose the money-lender as a cheat.
3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order To save her father from his debt and imprisonment.
Take a moment to ponder over the story. The above story is used with The hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between lateral And logical thinking.
The girl’s dilemma cannot be solved with Traditional logical thinking. Think of the consequences if she chooses The above logical answers.
What would you recommend to the Girl to do?
Well, here is what she did:
The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without Looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path Where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. ”Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said. “But never mind, if you look into the Bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I Picked.”
Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had Picked the white one. And since the money-lender dared not admit his Dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into An extremely advantageous one.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Most complex problems do have a solution. It is only that we don’t Attempt to think.
Some interesting books on Lateral and Logical Thinking on Amazon:
Some interesting books on Lateral and Logical Thinking on Flipkart:
Doubt!
A boy ‘n a girl were playing together. The boy had a collection of marbles. The girl had some sweets with her. The boy told the girl that he will give her all his marbles in exchange for her sweets. The girl agreed. The boy kept the biggest ‘n the most beautiful marble aside ‘n gave the rest to the girl. The girl gave him all her sweets as she had promised. That night, the girl slept peacefully. But the boy couldn’t sleep as he kept wondering if the girl had hidden some sweets from him the way he had hidden his best marble.
If you don’t give your hundred percent in a relationship, you’ll always keep doubting if the other person has given his/her hundred percent.
How clean is your Window?
A young couple Moved into a new neighborhood The next morning while they were having their breakfast, the young women saw her neighbor putting out clothes to dry in sun. “That laundry is not clean.”, she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash clothes. Perhaps She needs to use a better soap”, she added. Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time the neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comment. A month later, the women was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband “Look, she had learnt to wash. The clothes look clean. I wonder who taught her this. ” The husband said ” I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows .”
And also it is with our life. What we see when watching others depends on our window through which we look.
Perception matters
A teacher teaching Maths to seven-year-old Arnav asked him, “If I give you
one apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?
“Within a few seconds Arnav replied confidently, “Four!”
The dismayed teacher was expecting an effortless correct answer (three).
She was disappointed. “Maybe the child did not listen properly,” she
thought. She repeated, “Arnav, listen carefully.. If I give you one
apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?”
Arnav had seen the disappointment on his teacher’s face. He calculated
again on his fingers. But within him he was also searching for the answer
that will make the teacher happy. His search for the answer was not for
the correct one, but the one that will make his teacher happy. This time
hesitatingly he replied, “Four.”
The disappointment stayed on the teacher’s face. She remembered that
Arnav liked strawberries. She thought maybe he doesn’t like apples and
that is making him loose focus. This time with an exaggerated excitement
and twinkling in her eyes she asked, “If I give you one strawberry and one
strawberry and one strawberry, then how many you will have?”
Seeing the teacher happy, young Arnav calculated on his fingers again.
There was no pressure on him, but a little on the teacher. She wanted her
new approach to succeed. With a hesitating smile young Arnav enquired,
“Three?”
The teacher now had a victorious smile. Her approach had succeeded. She
wanted to congratulate herself. But one last thing remained. Once again
she asked him, “Now if I give you one apple and one apple and one more
apple how many will you have?”
Promptly Arnav answered, “Four!”
The teacher was aghast. “How Arnav, how?” she demanded in a little stern
and irritated voice.
In a voice that was low and hesitating young Arnav replied, “Because I
already have one apple in my bag.”
Moral:
“When someone gives you an answer that is different from what you expect,
don’t think they are wrong. There may be an angle that you have not
understood at all. You will have to listen and understand, but never
listen with a predetermined notion. Most of the times, we do not try to
understand the view of the other person and we find them wrong, but in
reality it is just the matter of giving other person a chance to explain.”
We can make a difference!
As a man walked a desolate beach one cold, gray morning he began to see another figure, far in the distance. Slowly the two approached each other, and he could make out a local native who kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he hurled things into the ocean.
As the distance between them continued to narrow, the man could see that the native was picking up starfish that had been washed upon the beach and, one at a time, was throwing them back into the water. Puzzled, the man approached the native and asked what he was doing. “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.” “But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach,” the man replied. “You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are just too many. And this same thing is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?” The local native smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea he replied, “Made a difference to that one!” Moral of the story is:—— Each of us is but one person: limited, burdened with our own cares and responsibilities. We may feel there is so much to be done, and we have so little to give. We’re usually short of everything, especially time and money. When we leave this shore, there will still be millions of starfish stranded on the beach. Maybe we can’t change the whole world, but there isn’t one of us who can’t help change one person’s whole world. One at a time. We can make a difference.
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 13 years to get that many views.
