Wisdom In A Pinch

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large, raging violent river.

 

Needing to get on the other side, the first man prayed, "God, please give me the strength to cross the river."

 

Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs and he was able to swim across in about two hours, having almost drowned twice.

 

After witnessing that, the second man prayed, "God, please give me strength and the tools to cross the river."

 

Poof! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and strong legs and he was able to row across in about an hour after almost capsizing once.

 

Seeing what happened to the first two men, the third man prayed, "God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross this river."

 

Poof! He was turned into a woman. She checked the map, hiked one hundred yards up stream and walked across the bridge.

At the risk of alienating any men that might be reading this post, I will add that the genders in the story were intended to make a point.  However, I look at the story as a more universal approach to problem solving.

How many times do we come upon a problem and decide we're well qualified to meet the challenge, but realize that asking for a little help might be appropriate.  We only ask for a little help because either our ego, or our feelings of self worth are limited and we don't want to risk being turned down, or dismissed out of hand.


Then there are the times that we have seen others attempt to solve the problem, incorporated some of their wisdom into our approach and then understood that asking for help might shorten the time to resolve the problem.  So, we do that and are pretty proud of ourselves for having the wisdom to ask for more expanded help in order to reach the goal.


On the other hand, what might happen if we approached the problem open to all the possibilities for resolving it and asking for what might appear to be more help than needed at first glance.  Would we be flooded with unlimited feedback that would be overwhelming, or trust that only the best solutions would be forthcoming?


The world today is far more complex than any other time in history.  We're pulled in a thousand different directions, each promising to be the best for our current needs.  How do we know what is best?  We go to that quiet place within and ask simply to have a hand up, a light bulb moment, a pathway opening up to show the way.  Then we trust the stillness to provide the best solution and act upon it.


No angst, no wringing of hands, no weariness about making choices, just the confidence that we are perfectly in tune with the Divine and capable of finding our way to the other side almost effortlessly.