At school, a little girl was headed down the stairs to the playground where there weren’t any other kids or adult supervision. This was, as the little girl had been told many times before, against the rules. An adult asked her, “Where are you going?”
The little girl turned around briefly and kept on walking down the stairs. The adult asked again, “Where are you going?” This time the little girl replied with adult sized sarcasm, “Are you blind? Don’t you see? You must be blind.”
To which the adult replied, “Oh, hmm, good point. I don’t know if I am blind or not. Maybe you’re invisible. Yeah you must be invisible and that’s why I couldn’t see you.”
The little girl looked at the adult, thought for a second, and walked back up the stairs, into the building.
Reminds me of how Milinda aspired to have wisdom like the rushing river that has no end. Upon hearing that, Nagasena aspired to have wisdom that encompassed that rushing river.
It amazes me how this situation could’ve been handled differently. It makes it very clear that we don’t have to play the game on someone else’s terms. It is always a choice. To play the little girl’s game the adult would’ve done the expected and reprimanded or prohibited the little girl from going to the playground. But what the adult did was switch to her own game, which the little girl couldn’t play, and had to immediately forfeit.
If the adult was offended by the little girl’s “disrespectful” speech, she wouldn’t have been able to answer the little girl in the way she did. She could’ve turned it into a lesson on how little girls must respect their elders. If we believe we have something at stake we will not see a situation objectively, and as a consequence we will actually have something at stake.
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