ON AN OPEN MIND

The following is a reprint from a previous blog of mine from September 23, 2010. 

I’m out in a field looking at an old red barn. People start arriving, and all are commenting on the beauty of the old gray barn. At first I pay no attention, but eventually I realize that every single one of them is commenting on a gray barn when, in fact, the barn is red. I wonder what’s wrong with them.

We start chit-chatting about the barn, and I cannot convince anyone that the color of the barn is red…barn-red.

Many people have arrived by now…50? 100? a whole bunch, for sure, and not one of them sees the barn as red. I will not budge because I see what I see, and I know what I see, and what I see is a barn the color of which is red. 

At some point I decide to attempt to see from a different perspective…maybe not as everyone else is seeing, but just a slight change in my view.  Maybe if I stand over there, squat down, turn my head…just try to be open to any change. Almost immediately I see a red barn but not the exact red…a tiny difference. So I keep turning my head, and the color keeps changing, ever so slightly, but changing.

It does not take long before I am seeing a gray barn. If I turn back to the way I first saw it, I understand how the barn can still be seen as red…it’s all in the way I’m looking at it.

“It’s all in the way I’m looking at it” is also known as keeping an open mind. Not easy for me. Mainly, I reckon, because, underneath it all, is the fact that I must always be willing to be wrong. Who prays for that? But the fact is, when I’m simply willing to be wrong, there’s an equal willingness to be right…it’s when I’m fighting to be right, that willingness, the real key, is lost.

Thank You.