Think out of box

A moneylender offered to forgo a farmer’s debt if he could marry his daughter. The cunning money-lender made it look like a fair deal. He told them that he would put a black and a white pebble into an empty bag. If the girl picked the black pebble, she would have to marry him and if she picked the white pebble she need not marry him.

The sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag. It seemed like an impossible situation for the young girl. She could not expose him lest he back off from the deal which offered a chance to escape the debt.

She purposefully fumbled while drawing out a pebble and let it fall and be lost on the pebble-strewn path. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But if you look at the one left in the bag, you will know which pebble I picked.’ Since the money-lender could not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an advantageous one.

This story shows the difference between lateral and logical thinking. The girl's dilemma could not have been solved with traditional logical thinking. Most complex problems do have a solution. It is only that we don't attempt to think differently. To be better at handling difficult situations, we need to think out of the box.

The term originates from an analogy that draws a person’s thought in comparison to a box and how anything outside seems far-fetched and unachievable. Thinking outside the box helps discover answers where none seem to exist. We need to break the barriers of the box of routine thinking.

Limited choices we see may not all that be
Think out of the box, set the solutions free!

~ Pravin K Sabnis