Late one night a police officer ran into a drunken man. The man was mumbling to himself under the streetlight, searching for something, and when the officer asked, he slurred that he was looking for his house key. The officer helped him look, but after quite a while there was still no sign of the key. The officer suggested they retrace his steps and asked where he had last seen the key. "Where I last saw the key? That's easy. I dropped it across the street over there." Stunned by this absurd answer, the officer shouted, "Then why on earth are you looking over here on this side?" "Well, it's bright over here because of the streetlight." (13p)
From Bill O'Hanlon, translated by Kim Bo-mi, Do One Thing Different (OneAndOneBooks)
As we go through life, we face many problems and search for solutions. Sometimes we struggle. Some problems are genuinely hard to solve, but a lot of our struggles come from straying from the 'basics.' The episode above sounds absurd at first glance. But in reality, we often don't search for solutions where we 'dropped the key' and instead look in the place 'that's bright because of the streetlight.' We wander in places where the key can't possibly be found. That 'streetlight' can be personal bias or prejudice, overblown pedantic analysis, or a misunderstanding of the real nature of the problem. I pause to check whether I'm currently wandering in a place 'that's bright because of the streetlight.' If you've lost your key, you have to look where you 'dropped it,' not where 'the streetlight makes it bright.'
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