Story of wisdom
Chapter 1 Blind man touch the elephant
There were five blind people that heard someone tell them that the elephant is such an amazing animal. It is huge and powerful. All the blind men got excited and wanted to know what the elephant looks like. So they went to touch the elephant, after that…
The first blind man said “It’s strange, the elephant isn’t a giant animal at all? It’s so thin like a rope” he said whilst holding the tail of the elephant.
The second blind man immediately said “That’s not true, it’s not that thin it’s more like a tree trunk. It’s round, thick, strong and solid” The second blind man was touching the leg of the elephant.
The third blind man was now intrigued and also touched the elephant and said loudly “No no it’s not either one, it’s soft like a rope, not as big as a tree trunk. I would say it’s more like… Ah it’s more like a hose” That was the result as the third blind man touched the elephants trunk.
After that there was silence, then the fourth blind man spoke, he said with a querying attitude “I don’t understand what you guys are talking about, first I think it feels thin and flappy like a piece of fan or piece of a large leaf”
Suddenly the fifth blind man was laughing loudly he said “you guys are so blind! It’s so obvious the elephant is giant it’s so big it’s like a piece of wall” He was proud and sure. The fifth blind man was touching the side of the elephants belly.
Wisdom 1:
What did we learn from this??
Each blind man touched one part of the elephant, each blind man used what they felt to judge what the whole elephant was. When we use only part of the truth to judge the complete truth, we are automatically wrong.
The fifth blind man said all the other four blind men were wrong and laughed at them, he didn’t even realize that he was also blind. That means that when we don’t see all the angles of reality and that are overconfident with an arrogant attitude, to put other people down, it’s even more blind. A double blind case.
It would be wiser if we are in a situation where we are not aware of the complete truth from every angle we could use a sentence like: I think or from what I can gather… it could be this way… but there could be other possibilities or simply try to have a humble attitude to simply describe what you are aware or what you know but not dismiss or exclude other possibilities, especially being arrogant to put other people down.
Photo by Kelly Arnold on Unsplash
