TwoCents | Thinking Out Of The Box Is Always Advantageous.

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a Merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the Moneylender. The moneylender who was Old and Ugly, fancied the merchant's Beautiful Daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forget the merchant's debt if he 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 the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. ° If she picked the 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 into 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 these pebbles, the sharp-eyed girl noticed he had picked up two black pebbles and immediately put them in the bag. He then asked the girl to pick her pebble from the bag. Now a quick question, if you were the girl what would you have done? If you had to advise her what would you have told her? Careful analysis would produce three possibilities 1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble. 2. The girl should show that there were two pebbles in the bag and expose the money-lender as a cheat. 3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in other to save her father from his debt and imprisonment. The above story is used with the hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between ‘LATERAL and LOGICAL THINKING’ Don't let me bore you Let's continue the story. So, the girl put her hand into the money bag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it she fumbled and let it fall into the pebble-strew path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. Immediately she reacted and shouted ‘Oh how clumsy of me to have allowed this fall from my hand’ she said. But she smartly said well “But never mind, if we look at the money bag and see which pebble is there it will tell which pebble I picked” Since the remaining pebble is black, it was assumed that she picked the white pebble. And since the money-lender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed to be an impossible situation into an advantageous one. Moral lesson Most complex problems have their solution, sometimes we just have to think about them differently. Kindly drop a lesson you learned from this, and share your insight.

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