Anyone who would like to do the best thing in the best possible way is faced with a terrible dilemma, namely, that there are as many opinions about what is best to do as there are people to say nothing about the fact that most people even have trouble agreeing on the best way to do it.  No matter how convinced you are that the only way to do something is to do it your way, there will be others who insist on doing it their way. No matter how right some people seem to be they almost always eventually do something that turns out wrong; and no matter how wrong some people seem to be, even they sometimes do something brilliantly right. The dilemma is, of course, when should I do it my way, in spite of what others say, or do it the other’s way, in spite of what I think?

Another fact of life we have to face is that no matter how well we prepare and anticipate possible problems, something will often go wrong anyway. The solution of our problem often causes problems for others. No matter how ready we are to handle the expected, the unexpected is sure to sometimes happen. The only way to expect the unexpected is to expect that when the unexpected happens we will manage to come up with some way of coping with it.  The best consolation and hope we have is the fact that some good things always seem to emerge from the bad things that happen.

Not long after President Eisenhower replaced President Truman in the White House, a crisis erupted in Hungary, when the Russian army invaded the country. For a while President Eisenhower seemed hesitant, not knowing what to do. Just about that time a reporter interviewed Mrs. Truman asking her what she thought her husband would have done. Without a moment’s hesitation she replied “He might not have done the best thing, but he would have done something.”

I think there is a good lesson in this for us. We don’t always have the luxury of research and planning. When something needs to be done, we just have to follow our instincts to accommodate the situation as we see it and act. Even an imperfect response is often better than no response at all. We just have to remember that we are not God. We can and do make mistakes. But in another way we are like God. As the saying goes, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” I would paraphrase it differently: ”To err is human, to correct one’s mistakes is divine.”

Here is a fable I wrote that illustrates these points.


WHICH KIND OF ANTHILLS IS BEST?

Once upon a time there was a colony of ants that constructed the highest anthill in the whole region. It towered over all the nearby anthills and its ants were very proud of their achievement and thought themselves far superior to all the other ants. This, of course, made some of the other ants so mad that they began to enlarge their own anthills building them taller and taller, each trying to surpass the others.

Some ants, however, refused to be intimidated and were quite satisfied with their average size anthills. “Let the other fellows, if they want, spend all their energies and resources on construction. We are perfectly content with what we have. Let’s take advantage of the situation and go out to gather more food and provisions while the others are busy building.”

And there were also some colonies that had just begun to establish themselves and their anthills were still quite small. “Let’s keep ourselves small,” declared their leaders. “Look at how hard those other anthills have to work to enlarge and maintain their structures. Does it really help them to eat and stay alive? I say let’s just go gather food and come back and enjoy ourselves.”

Thus it was that all the level plain of the region was soon filled with three kinds of anthills: there were the skyscrapers rising above all the others; there were the little low ones dwarfed by all the others; and then there were all those in between which were not as small as the small ones but not as big as the big ones.

Each kind thought it was the most fortunate. The tallest ones believed they were so big they had nothing to fear from bad weather or attacking anteaters. The middle-sized ones felt they were protected from the wind and rain by the skyscrapers around them and that anteaters, of course, would first attack the biggest anthills since there were so many more ants there to eat, which would give them time to escape. The lowest felt secure in the shadow of all the bigger ones around them and were sure that no anteater would bother with a little anthill when there were so many others around with so many more ants in them.

Then one day a terrible storm descended on the plain with lightning, hurricane-force winds and torrents of rain. The anthill that was originally the tallest and which had caused all the competition was lucky. Since it was no longer the highest, the lightning struck its neighbor instead frying all the ants inside. The anthills within the perimeter were indeed spared the worst effects of the wind and driving rain, but some of them were crushed and destroyed when the anthills open to the full brunt of the storm toppled over on top of them, because their wide walls weakened by the pounding rain were no longer any match for the powerful gusts of wind.

Then the floodwaters began to rise. The skyscrapers with their broad bases were least damaged. The average-sized were harder hit and many of the smallest were washed away, though some were saved by the piles of debris from the larger structures fallen down around them keeping the floodwaters away.

When the storm had passed and the damage assessed, it appeared that only half of the smallest, half of the middle-sized and half of the skyscraper anthills had survived. The rest were gone.

The ants who remained barely had a chance to clean up the mess, because they were soon attacked by a bunch of hungry anteaters. Some anteaters went straight to the biggest anthills knowing that there they would find the greatest number of ants. Others avoided the biggest anthills expecting that their thicker walls would make it harder to get to the ants, so they turned to the middle-sized hills where there were also plenty of ants. Finally, some anteaters made a beeline for the smallest anthills, which didn’t contain so many ants, but would be very easy to destroy.

Fortunately for the ants there were many more anthills than there were anteaters, so by the time the anteaters left half of the anthills remained untouched and there were enough inner chambers and subterranean chambers in those attacked that about half of the ants in them escaped harm.

When it was all over, the ants got together in a big meeting to decide what to do, but no matter how long they debated they could never agree on which size of anthill was safest and best. To this very day all over the world ants of every kind are still discussing this point without any solution in sight. Likewise, the anteaters still argue about which size of anthill is most efficiently attacked first. As for the weather, storms don’t talk to each other. The wind doesn’t consult the rain, the lightning ignores both wind and rain and the floods just come and go as they please.

There are lessons hidden here.

For every pro there is a con. Whoever wins, someone loses. Not everyone who goes comes back. Not everyone lost is found.

Lightning won’t strike twice is no consolation for the one stuck once.

Annihilating ants would only drive anteaters to eat something else.   Would you like to have that on your conscience?

If you want to annihilate anteaters because they eat ants, why stop there? What about all those humans who eat meat?

It’s OK to live in an anthill, if you are an ant. All others are strongly advised to live somewhere else.

No matter how safe you make something, there is always something unexpected that might happen. My poor friend had a terrible accident    when he tripped on the Safety Manual he wrote that had fallen on the floor.

No matter how well you prepare for an expected storm, it brings along something you didn’t expect.

Since you always expect the worst, why do you complain so much when it happens?

It’s a good thing that we have another life to look forward to, because we never know when this one is going to end.

We can’t always choose what is going to happen to us, but we can almost always choose what to do when it happens.

Any anthill is better than camping in the open just because you can’t decide what kind of anthill you want.

It’s not the kind of house you live in that counts most, but the way you live in that house.

The biggest tragedy is not that tragedies strike, but that so many of those struck might have been saved had more precautions been taken or preparations made.

Many of the ants who survived were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. But many more survived by doing the right thing when they found themselves in the wrong place.

The life of an ant is beset with dangers. That doesn’t keep them from being good ants.

On judgment day we won’t be asked how many accidents we managed to survive, but we might be asked why we didn’t do more to escape the one that killed us.

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