[MD] time-saving

[MarshaV]

Greetings,

This story is from a very interesting book, and it is available as a pdf.

"I was in India during the monsoon season, living for awhile in a community founded by a man who’d lived many years with Mahatma Gandhi. One morning I woke up to discover this was the day we were going to begin the construction of a barn. Women, men, and children were forming a line from the creek bed to the site of the building, about a quarter of a mile away. Teenage girls were assembling at the site where there was a pile of huge rocks. As I took my place in the line, I asked Nayan Bala, the woman next to me, what in the world was going on. “We’re transporting the mortar materials from the creek,” she said, as the first tin bowl came my way. “Here, pass this on.” The bowl contained a little water, some gravel and small pebbles. I passed it to the woman next to me, and as soon as I turned around, there was another bowl coming at me. I handed that one over and another one came. And another, and another. 

"It was 98 degrees and the humidity was hovering at about 90 percent. After passing bowls for an hour, I thought I might like to change places with the girls up at the site. “What are they doing with the rocks?” I asked. “They carry them on their head and deliver them to the men once the mortar is in place,” said Nayan Bala, passing me another bowl. I decided to stay in line. But the heat was unbearable, and I was getting irritable. There has to be another way, I thought, as I scanned the horizon looking for some way out of this predicament. 

"I saw several oxen lazing around further down the creek, a tractor off in the distance, and a flat bed trailer up near the rock pile. “This is ridiculous!” I said to Nayan Bala, whose face was as drenched with sweat as mine. “Why don’t we hook up those oxen to some carts, and get that tractor hitched to the flat bed. There’s no reason why all these people have to be killing themselves passing these little bowls. Let’s mechanize this process. Don’t you know time is money?” 

"As much as I’d prided myself on not being an “ugly American,” there it was, right out in the open. Even as those last few words tumbled out of my sorry mouth, I knew I had crossed some boundary, created some new cultural divide with the power of my own words. I wanted to shrink into non-existence. But Nayan Bala was a mountain of kindness. She put the bowl down that was coming my way, wiped her hands on her sari, and placed them on my shoulders. “Maybe you haven’t been in India long enough to understand something important about us. Every person is in line here because they want to be. In ten years, or twenty years, when this barn is built, they will bring their children here, their grandchildren here, and they will tell them the story of how they helped build this barn. They are proud to be doing this, and they will be proud every time they tell the story. Do you think we should deny them this?”



(Phillips, Jan, 'The Art of Original Thinking – The Making of a Thought Leader')

http://www.janphillips.com/downloads/ArtofOriginalThinking.pdf