Life is a box full of surprises waiting to be discovered. But sometimes we go too fast, excessively immersed in our thoughts and worries, to look around us and appreciate all the good and the beautiful that surrounds us.
The same goes for the people we meet. Sometimes our prejudices, stereotypes or simply our haste prevent us from appreciating what these people have to give us. But if we lived with a more open mind, if only we were more willing to receive, we would discover with amazement that sometimes we receive more from those we least expected.
Gifts come from the most unexpected directions
World War II had begun and the Nazis were advancing across Europe. One of their secret weapons was the Enigma machine, thanks to which they sent encrypted messages to submarines that intercepted ships carrying aid sent from the United States.
In this context, the British recruited one of the best mathematicians and cryptanalysts of the moment, Alan Turing, and gave him a mission that seemed impossible: to decipher the Enigma. Turing decided to put aside the traditional encryption method and set to work to create a machine capable of decoding Enigma. Everyone thought he was crazy.
After years of hard work, unable to prove the effectiveness of her invention and about to be withdrawn from the project, a woman who had nothing to do with cryptography but was in charge of listening and transcribing messages, during a conversation gave him an idea for the code that would make his machine work.
Thanks to the hard work of Turing, who is now considered the pioneer of computer science, and that informal conversation with the woman, it is estimated that the war ended between two and four years ago, thus saving many lives.
This example, which is not the only one in history, tells us that many times, the people we least expect it from, can offer us a huge gift, we just have to keep open and listen. The problem is that sometimes we are too closed in on ourselves, often our beliefs or the knowledge we have accumulated prevent us from seeing and accepting those gifts.
The mistake of thinking like the experts
A very interesting experiment conducted at Cornell University highlights the risks of thinking like experts. These psychologists recruited a group of 100 experts in different subjects, some were geographers, other economists, philosophers, biologists ... All had to answer a series of questions, some of which were related to their specialty.
However, the trap was that some of these questions contained incorrect data. For example, a geography question referred to a non-existent city and a biology question included terms that did not exist in that science.
Despite this, the experts were the ones who most fell victim to this trap. Because? Simply because they did not want to acknowledge their lack of knowledge in an area in which they considered themselves specialists. Therefore, what they thought they knew turned into a barrier that prevented them from identifying errors.
And it is curious to note that, even if we are not willing to acknowledge it, we often behave like the experts of this experiment. We adopt this attitude:
- Whenever we think we are superior to someone else
- Whenever we think we have the absolute truth in our hands
- Whenever we believe that no one has something to teach us
- Whenever we close ourselves to new ideas due to our stereotypes
But very often, it is precisely the people most alien to us who are able to offer us a new perspective, a more objective and innovative perspective. Therefore, it is always worth listening to anyone.
Wonderful people who give us huge gifts without asking for anything in return
Sometimes, there are people who simply surprise us. In fact, it usually happens to parents often with their children. They can put all their expectations and dreams on one of them and, in the end, it is the other child who fulfills their dreams or follows the family tradition.
This phenomenon also occurs in couple relationships or in the circle of friends. When everything seems to fall apart around us, support and understanding may not come from family, friends or partner, but from a colleague or just an acquaintance.
In fact, it is something that often occurs in hospitals. When people are hospitalized in the same room and spend a lot of time together, they usually find the best consolation in the "stranger" of the next bed, an understanding that the closest people cannot offer them because they have not had the same experience.
Many of these people will disappear from our life, they will get off at the next station and everyone will follow their path. However, from time to time, it is worth remembering them, remembering how much they contributed, often without expecting anything in return, pleasantly surprising us. Who knows? It is likely that someday, perhaps today, these people too will remember the support we offered them.
It is certainly very nice that someone surprises us in this way. It comforts our soul to receive something from a person who expects nothing in return. But we must not forget that in order to receive, we must first be willing to accept.
Remember that ...
Sometimes the one who you least believe is the one who teaches you the most, and the one you give the least to is the one you receive the most from ...
Sometimes the one you least expect from is the one who gives you the most, and the one you think about least is the one who remembers you the most ...
Sometimes the one who talks the most is the one who listens less, and the one who promises the least keeps ...
Sometimes those who are furthest away are those who are closest in case of need, and those who are close to us when everything goes well, are also those who immediately distance themselves when it goes wrong ...
Sometimes it is simply difficult for us to understand this dimension of life; feel, think and believe that things are less, when in reality they are more ...
