There were six close friends in India. They were all blind. They all went to the zoo together. They came to the garden where there was an elephant.

One of them approached the elephant and touched its strong trunk. "I can't believe it, the elephant is as flat as a wall!" he said.

The second man approached out of curiosity, but he too gritted his teeth. "Wow! It's sharp and sharp like a spear, and smooth and slippery," he said.

Unable to wait any longer, the third man touched the elephant: "Wow, the elephant looks like a snake."

The fourth man was touching the elephant's knees and legs: "The elephant looks more like a tree, how could you not notice?"

The fifth man had the chance to touch the elephant's ears: "No matter how blind I am, I can see that the elephant is like a fan, are you kidding me?"

The sixth man groped the elephant. What he got was the elephant's tail: "I think the elephant looks more like a rope."

The six Indian friends argued with each other for a long time. None of them accepted the other's thoughts and ideas. They all claimed that they were right and not wrong. The argument grew and grew. None of them thought of touching the whole elephant. All were adamant and all were sure. In fact, they were all partly right, but all wrong.

I like to tell this poem by John Godfrey Saxe like a story. It's a great story about perspective and seeing the whole. I like stories in my writing because no writing is as enduring and intriguing as stories. Since curiosity has existed since the creation of man, we want to know and understand the end, we want to know other lives.

But what is right in the face of these separations? Who will decide that? Who will judge in religious disputes, who is right and who is wrong? What about in racial conflicts? Which is the best or the purest? Is there still such a pure race on earth? I recently saw somewhere on the internet that in America they gathered young people from different places and took their saliva. When they came together a week later and it turned out that the girl who said she was German was Asian, the guy who said he was British was African, the woman who said she was American was Scandinavian, they were all shocked and started crying.

So none of them are really different from each other. For someone to decide what is right and what is wrong in all these things, he has to be outside all religions, outside all ethnicities, outside all religions, and completely impartial, which is impossible. The one who decides the rightness or wrongness of all these things would have to be outside all of them, which is also impossible.

"In order to understand the truth or falsity of what we see in the world, there must be an instrument that points to the truth; in order to understand the truth of this instrument, there must be an experiment; in order to understand the truth of the experiment, there must be an instrument. You will say that since our senses cannot solve our problem with certainty, since they themselves are not certain, then we must appeal to reason; but no reason can arise without another reason: Are we back again?" How beautifully Montaigne describes this vicious circle...

One day when we stop looking only from our own perspective, when we stop empathizing and realize that we are one at the core of everything, right or wrong, right or wrong will no longer matter...

Every day a retired man would sit in front of the window and look out. Every time the neighbor woman hung the laundry in the garden, he complained: "What a way she washes them. They don't look white at all. They are yellow. Someone should tell her about bleach or something."

One day, while sitting in front of the window again, he saw the neighbor woman starting to hang the laundry. "Finally!" he said. "This is the first time I've seen white laundry. I guess she's learned how to wash."

"No!" said his wife. "Those clothes were always white. Only I wiped the windows this morning, which I hadn't done for months."

The ego, which clings to human beings at the moment of birth, has a thousand and one games and schemes. Most of all, it feeds on criticism, criticizing, self-justification and stubbornness. Thus it ensures its own continuity and growth.

This is why big fights and wars always break out. We cannot perceive, even for a moment, that we might be wrong or incomplete. The need to always be right and to be approved disappears when there is awareness.

One day I intend and believe wholeheartedly in a total awakening, in the brotherhood and awareness of all the people of the world, in peace and tranquility, in the smiling face of light instead of darkness... With all my excitement and enthusiasm...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber