Rational Thinking

Here is your Saturday STORY on: SOLVING PROBLEMS: Few people will understand how to apply SACRIFICE. Today's story is the very story that you will not forget easily, as it is the perfect illustration. The story is sad and it is sure to make you ponder over the possibilities, but I'll introduce it with some guidance. When you solve a problem you complete a task that prevents what was the problem coming back and causing anguish again. That being such, as deciding as a country's president or prime minister to go to war; or as huge as that was to look at more regular day to day events such as deciding whether to clean the fridge or not. In WISDOM you cannot deem a problem on the eventual consequences, although tempted as you may be. You deal with every problem as if you needed to answer to a higher source should the situation occur. If you opened the fridge door over the period of a week and the same lingering smell drifted out, you'd need to take action. This is no different in solving the problem of whether to go to war or not. We cannot sweep the problem under the carpet and hope it goes away, we need to evaluate what would solve the problem the causes the heartache and act. We act following our good judgement. This can only be considered good judgement is we actively and on a regular basis try to improve our skill at making good judgements. If that judgement hasn't improved for twenty years, then it may be in need of an overhaul. Looking once more at the bad odour from the fridge, you decide against cleaning it because you have more important tasks that lay ahead. Establishing priorities is difficult as today's story illustrates, but we must prevent an easily invented excuse from doing a chore that is essential. A bad odour could eventually cause ill-health. We NEED to sacrifice a more enjoyable task, such as shopping for clothes on a Saturday, to cleaning out the fridge. The one hour task will soon be over a done with and we still may find time to look around the shops. We NEED to SACRIFCE regularly to engage in more important tasks. Not as in biblical times to sacrifice an animal, but to sacrifice an otherwise desirable event to complete a more mundane chore. THE BRIDGE KEEPER There was once a bridge which spanned a large river. During most of the day the bridge sat with its length running up and down the river parallel with the banks, allowing ships to pass thru freely on both sides of the bridge. But at certain times each day, a train would come along and the bridge would be turned sideways across the river, allowing the train to cross. A switchman sat in a small shack on one side of the river where he operated the controls to turn the bridge and lock it into place for the trains to cross. One evening the switchman was waiting for the last train of the day to come, when thru the dimming twilight he caught sight of the train lights. He stepped to the controls and when the train was within a prescribed distance, he turned the bridge into position. Although to his astonishment, he found the locking control was not working. If the bridge was not locked in position it would wobble back and forth at the ends and cause the train to jump the track and go crashing into the river. And this would be a passenger train with many people aboard. He left the bridge turned across the river, and hurried across the bridge to the other side of the river where there was a control lever which he could operate manually to lock the bridge in place. He would have to hold the lever back firmly as the train crossed. He could hear the rumble of the train, and he took hold of the lever and leaned backward to apply his weight to it, locking the bridge. He kept applying the pressure to keep the mechanism locked. Many lives depended on this man's strength. Then, from the direction of his control shack across the bridge, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold. "Daddy, where are you?" His four-year-old son was crossing the bridge to look for him. His first impulse was to cry out to the child, "Run! Run!" But the train was too close; the tiny legs would never make it across the bridge in time. In the same instant, he almost left the lever to run and snatch up his son and carry him to safety. But he realized that he could not get back to the lever in time for the train to pass safely. Either the people on the train or his little son would have to die. It took a moment to make his decision. The train sped safely and swiftly on its way. No one on board was even aware of the tiny broken body thrown mercilessly into the river by the onrushing train. Nor were they aware of the pitiful figure of the sobbing man, still clinging tightly to the locking lever long after the train had passed. Neither did they see him walking home more slowly than he had ever walked before, to tell his wife how they had lost their son. QUOTE: 'Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.' (Kahlil Gibran)

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