Lessons from Life!

This is a (slowly growing) collection of amusing incidents from which one might undoubtably learn certain important lessons. Unfortunately, it is not always clear exactly what those lessons should be!

Don't forget your wallet
My father-in-law is a bit of a character. He always jokes with shop keepers when buying things; asking for the rotten fruit and veg, or questioning them as to whether they correctly remembered the prices of the things they are selling. He is short, jovial, witty, quite elderly and obviously not very well off, so most play along with him, often reducing prices a bit to help him out. There are occassional individuals who fail to appreciate his humour and, even rarer, ones who return it. I only recall one individual who actually beat him at his own game! It was on a very hot summers day when we went out shopping together. On entering a small market, he starting asking for cheese and olives and a few other basic essentials. The shopkeeper added it up and told him the result, whereupon he (jokingly) declared that he had forgotten his wallet at home and only had about a quarter of the necessary money - what were they to do? The shopkeeper, however, said that that much money was acceptable provided he gave his hat too. My father-in-law was a little taken aback by this generousity and tried to explain to the shopkeeper that the hat would not suit such a handsome young man and it certainly wasn't worth anything since it was almost as old as he was. The shopkeeper replied that he didn't really want the hat, but was taking it so that the next time my father-in-law went out shopping he would feel the full heat of the sun on his bare head and would thus be reminded that he should not forget his wallet!
Follow the leader
My dad used to drive to work and back every day of the week. The journey was a short one, only a few miles and mostly straight down the main road. For this reason he was not too concerned when one night, the fog came down. It was a real pea-souper, he simply could not see more than a few yards in front of him. Anyway, he left work as usual and began driving extremely slowly and carefully towards home. All he could see was the kerb just in front of the car. In this manner he followed the main road for about two miles until he came to the roundabout where he had only to turn left, take the first exit, and then turn left again into the driveway of his house. Don't forget, this is England where they drive on the left, so turning left is very easy! Finally, he entered the driveway. Safely home at last, he stopped the car and got out. Suddenly a voice came from behind, "Excuse me mate, but where exactly are we?" Walking back, my father discovered that three cars had followed him right into the driveway of his own house!
The right thing to do
Here is an old story which some of you may not yet have heard; people and place names have been omitted to protect the guilty! The story takes place in a rather famous english university, situated on the banks of a beautiful, slow moving river. In this idyllic setting staff and students while away the hot summer months, swimming, rowing and sunbathing. In fact, on a particularly secluded section of the river bank, it had become something of a tradition for male students to sunbathe in the nude. Of course, one day the inevitable happened and a couple of female students, rowing down the river, strayed into this "private" area. The girls, realising their mistake, tried to vacate the region as quickly as they could. Meanwhile, the men covered themselves with their hands. All that is, except for one professor, who buried his face in his hands. When the girls were a safe distance away, the students turned to the professor and told him he could look again, the girls had now gone. But, why hadn't he just covered himself like the others? Had been too upset to think properly? The professor, however, replied that he was not at all embarassed, it was simply a matter of common sense. He didn't know how the students were recognised around town, but he was most definitely known by his face!
Coincidence or Prophecy?
Life is full of coincidences. Indeed, one might view life itself as a coincidence, an unlikely cocktail of bizarre substances coming together under the most exotic and transitory of conditions. A fleeting and inconsequential moment in the vastness of space and time. Yet, there are coincidences and, well, coincidences! Walking down the street we bump into a longlost childhood friend, ... Most such events seem unrelated, mere chance, while others are clearly the result of causal mechanisms. Some, however, give us that uneasy feeling that, while there is no obvious causal connection, something or someone somewhere is trying to tell us something.

Prophecy, predicting the future, is not unusual, we all do it all of the time. It is our modus operandi, our very existence. We naturally function by seeking out and exploiting any regularities we can find in the world around us. Knowing what to expect allows us to select appropriate actions and hence improve our chances of success, of survival. Some manage better than others, some excel in particular fields, the talented batsman, the rally driver and the successful stockbroker or businessman. We find nothing strange in these, yet some individuals do surprise us. They surprise us by making predictions which seem totally unwarranted, seemingly beyond the bounds of possibility.

Often prophecies are the result of unconscious premonitions. They can happen to anyone without any apparent warning. It is impossible to say whether such occurances are for "real" (i.e. there actually is a causal, if unknown, reason for them) or whether they are mere coincidence. The fact that they are often mistaken or open to multiple interpretations, suggests the latter, but the suspicion remains. Here I recount one such personal experience...

It was a beautiful summers day and I had been sitting thinking in a comfy armchair by the open window. I must have dozed off in the warm bright mid-morning sunlight. I wasn't aware of the dream I was having until it became a nightmare. All at once, the tall elegant buildings I had been admiring, exploded, splaying glass in every direction, much of it straight towards me. In an instant I found myself thankfully awake again. It was an unusual and very vivid dream, but a dream nevertheless and I forgot all about it. I probably would have never thought about it again were it not for something that happened a few hours later.

I was with my daughter in the saloon, while my wife was preparing lunch in the kitchen. All of a sudden there was an enormous bang and a scream. We rushed to the kitchen. There were pieces of glass everywhere, hundreds of them all over the work tops and the floor. By some miracle, my wife was unharmed, but it could have been terrible. For some reason the glass door of the mini-oven in which the meal was cooking, had literally exploded. The tiny fragments, all extremely hot, had gone everywhere. Some had even embedded themselves into the surface of nearby plastic objects. It doesn't bear thinking what would have happened to anyone unfortunate enough to have been right in front of it at that moment. We carefully tidied up. Only then did I remember my dream!
Too much knowledge

Our society values knowledge. It rewards those who possess it and those who strive to produce more, and rightly so, afterall, as the old adage says, knowledge is power. Knowing how to do things or what things to do or not to do, can save lives, time and money.

This, of course, is what learning and education is all about. Our children's education begins at home where they learn such vital lessons as how to move around, how to communicate, and how to interact with other people and things in the world. This closely supervised and hence relatively safe environment must prepare them for the potentially more hostile world outside, where survival now demands not only avoiding the natural pitfalls which Nature puts in our way, but also the ones brought about by society itself. To further equip the individual for the rigors they will face, we insist that our children go to school. This is partly expedency, it is cheaper and more efficient than having everyone educated at home. It also allows certain standards to be maintained since schools can offer a broader and deeper education than most parents would be able to give. Thus, at school, our children get much of the knowledge they will need to survive in the complex world we have created. This includes fundamental skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as a broader awareness and understanding of the world and society at large.

Those who demonstrate adeptness at such learning are encouraged to continue studying, and to thereby acquire the means to contribute to society through the production of knowledge. This is the principle role of university education, where the skills necessary for the accumulation and production of knowledge are further refined. Those who prove most successful here will eventually go on to practice their craft in universities and research establishments.

Unfortunately, knowledge can sometimes hinder our quest to know more. A senior manager at the research labs of the chemical giant ICI, found that some 50% of patents for new products resulted from the work of just six employees, none of whom had PhD's! Apparently, the reason for their success was that they tried things which their more educated colleagues didn't. What stopped the PhD's was knowledge they had learnt from teachers and books which said that certain things just wouldn't work. The others didn't know they weren't supposed to work and hence naively tried doing them, only to discover something interesting.

Another striking example of this phenomena is the discovery of a means for curing certain types of stomach ulcers. The medical textbooks say that nothing can live in the extremely acidic conditions of the stomach, and apparently because of this no-one had even considered the possibility that ulcers may be caused by a virus. Australian Dr. Brian Marshall accidently came across a virus in a biopsy sample. At first he thought it must be the result of contamination, but eventually he came to realise that maybe, just maybe, the textbooks were mistaken and the results genuine. After many more tests and the successful curing of patients through the use of antibiotics, the conclusion was obvious and yet Dr. Marshall had great difficulty convincing his medical colleagues that what they knew was wrong!

{Note: I remember these items from a TV program and haven't checked the references personally, so it may contain errors!}