The five blind men.

This is one of my favorite stories to show how we only know what we know. To create authentic change in our lives we have to embrace broader perspectives.

One day, a group of 5 blind men went to meet an elephant.
They had never, in all their life, ever before met an elephant.
Each moved forward, encountering a different part of the beast.

“Ah,” said one, bumping into the flank of the animal.
“An elephant is large and mostly flat, like the side of a tent.”
Another, who had taken hold of the elephant’s tusk, exclaimed,
“But no, the elephant is long, hard, curved and pointed.

Rather like a fencing post.”

But the third had stumbled into one of the front legs of the great creature and proclaimed that the elephant was, a large tall pillar – yet strangely capable of self-activated movement.” This man was clearly a philosopher and observer of life.

The fourth, catching hold of the tail, decided that an elephant was a kind of snake,
And the fifth finding himself mischievously teased by the elephant’s long trunk was firmly of the belief that an elephant was more like an animated, but intelligent rope. Probably self-organizing.

These five, standing around the elephant, each with his own honest yet limited perception and experience, began to debate the nature of the beast..

For a while one or two of men had begun to suspect that perhaps they were all correct and yet incomplete in their perceptions, the remainder had become so heavily entrenched in their position and so identified with their own point of view, that these five blind men are still vigorously debating the nature of elephants.

~Author unknown.

Tell me, how does this story apply to your life.