Many years
ago, I heard this story and it touched me.
One day, John was
walking back home when he saw his neighbor, Peter, behaving very strangely; he
was crawling on the floor, near his house. Even though they were not friends,
but out of a community sense, John approached Peter, greeted him and asked what
the problem was.
‘I lost my key… I just
dropped it somewhere and I can’t find it!’
John decided to help
him and, knees on the floor, started to look for it. After some time, however
he couldn’t find anything so he asked another question:
‘I can’t find it
either… Do you remember where you dropped it?’
‘Yes! I went to my
backyard to see something there and I let it fall.’
‘Backyard?’ John
looked at Peter with his back straight, but with the knees still on the
sidewalk. ‘So, why are you looking for it here?’
‘Well, it is so dark
there…’
John got very angry as
he thought it was a prank. He got up and went to his home, leaving Peter crawling
on the sidewalk.
I asked
myself: where is my key, really? And to
be honest, I think I have lost many keys along the years.
It is not
uncommon people try to avoid the inevitable – acceptance of mistakes and
weakness, problems in relationships, stress, bad health – by sticking to their comfort zone. But, of course, you can’t
find a key where you did not lose it which creates confusion and a kind of
eternal quest.
Now, let’s
retell the same story with a different approach.
One day, Peter arrived
late at his house. He took out his key and he was about to enter the house,
when he remembered he needed to do something in the backyard.
When he went there, it
was too dark… ‘I do need to fix this bulb.’ he thought to himself. Carefully,
he did what he went there to do and he was about to go toward the front door
when he tripped and fall. After getting up, Peter went fast to the front door,
determined to fix the bulb.
But tragedy does not
come alone; when he was about to open his door, he realized he lost his key.
Because it was dark there,
he rummaged around to see if there was anything he could use to illuminate the
backyard, when he heard someone coming; it was John, who greeted his neighbor.
Peter called for him
and explained his situation.
‘You know what, don’t
worry, I will get a lantern and we both go and look for it together.’
Less than 5 minutes
later, Peter was able to enter at his house. He took leave from John and at
last he went to fix the backyard bulb.
As you can
see, the two tales create a total different outcome. What is the difference
between them?
The first
thing is self-realization. In the
second telling, the neighbor realized
he lost something important and tried to fix that, instead of going to his comfort zone and pretending he could fix
it from there. Even though it is true the front of the house where the street
light gave a sensation of security, it didn’t help him to find the key. One of
the main results was that he was able to get cooperation from an outsider to solve
the whole situation. His attitude was proactive instead of reactive.
The second
thing is a sense of self-empowerment.
You can read the first tale as a person who is not empowered enough to solve
his own problems whilst in the second version, he is the owner of the house and
he is the one who has lost the key because a bulb was not working. By taking
over that responsibility, he is able to think straight and go for help.
What is that lost key you can now go and claim
again, by looking for it in the right place, even though it is a little dark?
