Without going in to particulars, I’ll just say that I was recently struggling with a dilemma that was escalating to undesireable levels of psyhchological distress. It was a situation where I was trying to decide whether to ask for a special favor. I knew that asking would not only be futile, but would also be embarrassing and demeaning. On the other hand, if I could get the favor, it would be really great.
In the course of some number of days during which I agitated over whether to ask for the favor or just let it go and move on, I stumbled across a collection of “quotations” I had saved once upon a time in an obscure subdirectory on my computer. It was a pretty pithy and amusing collection, and included this:
“The person who asks may be a fool for five minutes. The person who doesn’t ask will be a fool for life.”
So, I picked up the phone and asked.
Turned out, my premise was totally incorrect. What I was asking for was routine and did not even amount to a favor – it was freely available to anyone, simply for the asking.
So, there y’go!
The Fool Who Asks
July 23, 2006
General
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John
Without going in to particulars, I’ll just say that I was recently struggling with a dilemma that was escalating to undesireable levels of psyhchological distress. It was a situation where I was trying to decide whether to ask for a special favor. I knew that asking would not only be futile, but would also be embarrassing and demeaning. On the other hand, if I could get the favor, it would be really great.
In the course of some number of days during which I agitated over whether to ask for the favor or just let it go and move on, I stumbled across a collection of “quotations” I had saved once upon a time in an obscure subdirectory on my computer. It was a pretty pithy and amusing collection, and included this:
“The person who asks may be a fool for five minutes. The person who doesn’t ask will be a fool for life.”
So, I picked up the phone and asked.
Turned out, my premise was totally incorrect. What I was asking for was routine and did not even amount to a favor – it was freely available to anyone, simply for the asking.
So, there y’go!