Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu is a Turkish artist/cartoonist. One of his paintings got my attention.
Most of the analyses that I’ve seen go by similar captions as, “They let you think they are helping!”.
But from what I see, the efforts of the man on top are sincere. The following discourse conveys my thoughts on the same (Narrated by the man on top):
I want to help my people, but am I good enough? If I’m going to help I’ve got to do my best.. So I rise higher hoping to help better.. On and on I go until I’ve reached the top.. but alas.. I guess I’ve travelled a little too far.. and no more can I reach the very people I wanted to help..
Shows how a person with all the good intentions will not be able to achieve what he wants to because of the miscalculation of the goal. The goal here was to help the man in the trench. But the person outside [with all the good intentions!] raised to the top thinking that he could help better.
This also reflects how people want develop and hence let go of their roots to grow further in life.. but after a time they can hardly recognise their own roots. They’re just too far. It’s too sad if you can relate to it.
As a remedy, people should always keep in mind where they want to go in their lives. It’s a common practice to set sub-goals to achieve the bigger ones, but one should not be engrossed in over-achieving them. It’s the main goal that matters and it’s the main goal that always mattered. In this case, if the man outside wanted to help the man from the better position, he should’ve realised that going higher might not actually get him closer to his goal. Ignorance is not innocence and hence cannot be accepted as a reason to over-shoot. He should have checked every once in a while about what he wants. In other words, one should re-discover oneself once in a while whenever one feels lost. Not as easy as saying I realise, but one should always strive. On an entirely different note, one shouldn’t give up because perfection is impossible to achieve, but must strive towards it. Perfection is like infinity. One can only do a lim(x->∞), limit x tending to infinity. [For those who wants to take a bite at it, I know we can have systems where perfection is possible. Finding the square root of 4? 2. Perfect. No better solution than that! LOL]
When we’re talking about re-discovering our life goals, an analogy strikes me of the agile software development (we may not limit to software alone actually. You should read about it sometime if you haven’t already). The other models of software development usually involves taking the requirements and delivering the solution by the end of the term. But agile development involves checking and rechecking what is required and refining the path to the goal. This makes sure that the developers are not in an assumption that they’re on the right track and neither would the customer. This would save a bitter surprise for both the parties. Like the surprise of both the parties in this painting. A bitter surprise.
