Anecdote-Mop

While in school, the toilet in my room was in a deplorable state. Water leaked intermittently into the room and usually soaked the wardrobe that was close to it. It usually took me about 10 minutes to properly dry up the havoc caused. But the long lasting effect it had on the wardrobe could not be dried; It weakened even more at every flooding. And I had to clean it up as was the routine. I picked up the mop to start ‘work’ as usual but the situation was a little different because I was looking forward to finishing it in a shorter time than usual. Now usually, I started mopping the water that had spilled into the room, but I decided to take a different approach; I mopped from inside the toilet as against the norm of starting with the room with my feet getting wet as a result. It was not a very wise idea because as I mopped, the water spread further into the room and soaked the wardrobe even more than the previous occasions. At first it was as if I was wasting precious time but few minutes after, it was as if something magical had happened because the water dramatically. I finished shortly after. I traced the water leakage only to realize that it was a rather small opening. It got fixed that week in less than 5 minutes!
As I laid on my bed to rest after the hardwork #:-s, I mused over 3 lessons I had just assimilated. If you must get a different result then you must be ready to use a different approach. If you tolerate it, chances are you’ll never be able to change it. Little problems if left unvisited could spiral out of control.
Every problem you deal with has to be dealt with from the root. However stupid the idea may seem, it just must be done. Many of us will rather deal with the fruits of the problem rather than the roots (patching it up) because it seems like the logical thing to do. Oh how wrong we are! You can only patch for so long, pretty soon you’ll be unable to keep up with the show.