We are all running blind, or are we?

Last week I was on my way to the mall with my family to get some errands done. Thinking to confirm the best route to take, I quipped: "We should take a double left turn later?" To which my sister immediately replied, "No, we'll need to take a left followed by a right turn!"

"You should be turning right and then left" added my mum.

"What on earth are you talking about? Where will that lead us??" my sister exclaimed incredulously.

I was puzzled and self-doubt set in. I will admit to being a bit of what I term a "road-idiot" - someone who does not remembers or recognizes roads well and tends to lose their way easily. Thus I began to wonder if the route I thought was best was in fact wrong. Yet after some deliberation, I assuaged my self-confidence that the route I picked should in fact be correct and started wondering why my sister and mother would think otherwise.

What exactly is happening here? To explain, let us first read a little story about the elephant and the blind men:

The elephant and the blind men

Story and image from Jainworld

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was and everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man who was passing by saw this and stopped to ask them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each of the blind men told the wise man what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant. Actually the elephant has all of the features you said."

"Oh!" everyone said and there was no more fighting. They felt happy that they were all right.

Similar to the 6 blind men, I quickly realized that my mother, my sister, and myself were in fact all correct - we were simply looking at different parts of the route!

My simplistic abstraction of the planned route we disagreed over.

When I explained this to them, we all laughed and like the 6 blind men, happily went on our way. We eventually reached the mall safely and completed our errands.

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How many times have we argued with someone else, with us insisting on our way while they insist on theirs? Each of us either thinks we know best and the other party is wrong, or self-doubt creeps in and we decide that we are inadequate in some way and therefore wrong..

At times like this, it helps to take a step back and look at the big picture. Are we perhaps all looking at the same picture but simply focusing on a different part? Maybe a little re-alignment is all that is needed to resolve the differences and set us all happily on our way.