Even the most complex
situations in life may have a simple solution.......
To illustrate this, here goes a story...
Many hundreds of years
ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had a misfortune of owing a large sum
of money to a moneylender. The moneylender who was old and ulgy, fancied the
merchant’s beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo
the merchant’s debt if could marry the daughter. Both the merchant and his
daughter were horrified by the proposal.
The moneylender told
them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The
girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked up the
black pebble, she would become the moneylender’s wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven. If she picked up a
white pebble, she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be
forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown in
the jail.
They were standing on a
pebble strewn path in the merchant’s garden. As they talked, the moneylender
bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them, 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 up a pebble from the bag.
Careful analysis of the
situation shows that the girl had 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 moneylender as a cheat
- 3. The girl should pick up a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment
But what did the girl
actually do?
The girl put her hand
into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and
let it fall onto a 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 one I picked”. Since the remaining pebble
was black, it must be assumed that she picked up the white one. And since the
moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an
impossible situation into an advantageous one.
Morale of the story
Most
complex problems do have a solution, sometimes we have to think about them in a
different way.
