Crisis and Insight - A Mullah Nasruddin Tale

A man climbed up a coconut tree to pick coconuts but got scared while trying to climb down.

So, afraid to climb down, he was stuck there for some time and started shouting for help.

The wise old man Mullah Nasruddin, who was passing by heard his cry and decided to help him.

He picked up a long rope,

threw the one end to the man and asked him tie it around his waist very  tightly,

and tied the other end to a pole nearby.

Then said to the man in the tree

“There are nasty people in this village, they might simply pull the rope and you will crash down”

and started walking away.

The man in the tree was unable to untie the knot and left with no choice but to climb down.

So, spite of the fear, he managed to climb down the tree.

He stopped Mullah on his way and yelled at him

“Mullah, I asked for help but you created a crisis and put my life in danger”.

Mullah replied

“You could have climbed down the tree before the crisis, which you did afterwards.

 Don’t wait for crisis to change you, do it when you need to”.

A humorous tale with wise import.

This is true,

People change when there is crisis.

When there is natural calamity, people come together leaving behind their idiosyncrasies.

When there is crisis in one’s personal life, one is willing to forgo one’s peculiarities.

In crisis,

People would surrender the ego, step out of the comfort zone, listen to others and are willing to change their old habits.

But, when crisis fades away they are back to their old self.

This happens most of the time to most of the people.

Only a few sustain the new perception brought about by a crisis.

Why crisis does not bring about permanent change of perception and values to most people?

Let us look at a physical situation.

If I am attacked by a particular animal, that incident would permanently change my perception about the animal.

Here the incident is concrete and objective.

There is no going back here because the incident would penetrate both the conscious and the subconscious mind bringing permanent change.

But, psychological crisis are subjective and abstract.

Causes behind a psychological crisis are one’s belief system - social mores, opinions, prejudices etc.

And these factors are not seen as passive knowledge that can be amended

but considered as part of one’s personality and identity.

So, even if a crisis hits, people find it hard to change because it is challenging their identity itself.

Instead,

Most people believe that they can avoid similar crisis in future by tweaking their responses without changing any of their personality traits or values.

Then, the new perception brought about by the crisis does not penetrate their subconscious and become permanent.

It stays on the conscious mind and fades along with the crisis.

So, people are back to their old way of doing things.

But, a crisis exposes dent in ones’ personality - limitations, false belief, wrong values etc. 

Ignoring this insight and believing in response tweaking is like riding on the wrong lane with faith in one’s dodging ability.

This technique may not work because crisis is like a ghost, it can take different forms.

Mullah Nusruddin goes further,

He says, change before an incident escalates into a crisis because then it could even be too late.

Image Credit -pixabay(free)