Aspects of Being

Gabrielle Perreault

One of my all-time very favorite lines comes from the movie "Patch Adams". The scene involves Robin Williams' character speaking one-on-one with a mathematician who is seemingly deranged, and who keeps repeating, "How many fingers do you see?!" as he holds up four digits of his hand. "Look PAST the problem!" the exasperated 'madman' finally insists. "Patch" earns his name at this point by fixing a leaky paper cup on the desk, and comes up with the answer, realizing the worthy gist of the apparently ridiculous question. 

Likewise, the fine art of solving a good riddle lies not in looking too deeply into any supposedly intricately hidden meaning of the words, but rather ironically, at their face value and what they might imply as a clue. Once we hear the answer, it is painful to note that seeing 'clearly' is far and away a bigger advantage than being deviously clever... 

We love riddles, and we love answers. We live them and seek them all the days of our lives, and we take them very seriously. Yet as a consequence of this seriousness we often get so caught up in being challenged, and the ensuing fight for the "right" answer, that we forgo the simple exercise of merely being delighted by stepping back and possibly seeing things in a new way. Some call it Detachment. It isn't so much that the outcome makes no difference to the 'detached' seeker, but rather that the outcome itself can be vastly different if sought in a previously 'unorthodox' or uncommon manner. Ask any inventor, artist, or philosopher. (For that matter, ask any mother who's gotten her child to stop wailing after scraping his or her knee) All that we are now, and all that we have, all the wise solutions ever found came from someone who thought "outside the box". 

Think about that...and set no limits by how things "should be, are done, or have always been". There is much that needs fixing. How many fingers do YOU see? 

~ Surely if one poses a question with disdain instead of curiousity, he is not ready to embrace the answer. 
 

"The Difference Between Focus On Problems, And Focus On Solutions" * 

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity. (Ink won't flow down to the writing surface) In order to solve this problem, they hired Andersen Consulting (Accenture today). It took them one decade and 12 million dollars. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, under water, on practically any surface including crystal, and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. 

The Russians used a pencil... 

(*www.pastornet.au - humour)