Parable

Parables have a way of creeping into our learning - they're going to stick deeper and longer than any lecture.

Most of the time, without our even realizing it, we've learnt profound lessons after listening to the story of two mice who lost their cheese in a maze. Or that of a Samaritan who happened to bump into a traveler who had been beaten up.

Storytelling holds the key to a good teacher, and works wonder with children and adults alike. Consider the parable from The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey, a book I've read this week. Here you'll meet Olivia, a new hire at a customer service call centre. Open any page of her diary and you'll find a stressed-out working mom who is messed up with her sons' fight at home and the barrage of angry calls from frustrated customers at workplace.

"Hopeless," Olivia cried, and shook her head. She said the word as if it were a synonym for life. "Are we doomed to just stumble through life unhappy and confused?"

Then she learned an important "aha" from her call centre colleague. "For the ten problems of life - family troubles, work problems and money worries, finding your way in the world - I have no solution. But you have an eleventh problem. For that one I have help."

What's that eleventh problem? "The eleventh problem is your view that you should not have the ten problems. You can never get away from life's problems. Thinking that you can will always make you want to run from your life."

All of which is to say that we will be fooling ourselves when we think that we can have a life without problems. I could almost see a lightbulb appearing above Olivia's head when she nodded, "I get it: the key to a happy life is accepting that problems are simply a part of it."