Mr. Educated and Mr. Wisdom

Several years back Mr. Taleem Yafta (The Educated Person) was very famous for his knowledge and good speech. Once he was requested to deliver a lecture in a rural area. Mr. Taleem-Yafta went to his teacher Mr. Siana (Mr. Wisdom) and informed him that he will be visiting this village for the sermon.

 

"How will you go the Village"

 

"I shall take the bus and then I shall have to walk for 15 minutes in the fields to reach the village where some people will be waiting for me to take me to the rest home"

 

"In the fields there might be guard dogs taking care of sheep flock so they might harm you"

 

"Then I shall keep a stone with me to scare"

 

"You won't be able to control them with a stone; only one dog will run away when you throw the stone but rest of the dogs will attack you"

 

"Then I shall take a big wood or tree branches to scare them"

 

"They might be 4-5 dogs and it will be hard for you to control all of them"

 

Now Mr. Taleem Yafta started pondering to find another solution. Since this was his first such experience so he had no idea about the solution however he didn't want to feel insulted or ashamed in front of his teacher so he kept thinking for quite some time desperately. Then finally he asked Siana to advice him.

 

The teacher replied: "without disturbing any dog just go to the sheep flock boy and ask him that you want to cross the fields and he will assist you with assurance of no harm to you from any of his dogs"

 

For most of our problems we, the educated people, start making our own assumptions and logics to find the solutions. Sometimes we find good solution but in reality better solutions also exist for the same problem but we are not aware of those because of less knowledge or experience. Also we do not consider the real root of the issue, nor we consider taking advice from the relevant people. So in summary:

 

1.    Asking questions or taking advice is not a bad thing at all as long as you are asking from your well wisher or from a stranger who is harmless.

 

2.    For a decision having big impact in life, it is recommended to seek advice from multiple people. This will increase your horizon and expose you to wider angle of the situation and would give you more vision to consider multiple options for better decisions.

 

3.    Developing Analytical Skills helps a lot. You can breakdown the big problem into smaller problems and then address them one by one, although this comment not applicable to this story)

 

4.    Sometimes it wise to behave like Mr. Siana to give advice to someone if you have good one. Mr. Siana empathic approach explored the mind of Mr. Taleem-Yafta first and then gave him advice. He didn't impose his comments all of a sudden instead he followed slow approach to understand the perspective of Taleem-Yafta and then shared his knowledge.

 

5.    Gaining knowledge is equally good but without experience, the knowledge may not be helpful. The wise approach will be to learn things (knowledge) and then analyze from multiple angles in order to have an insightful understanding of things (wisdom).