Peeling An Orange and the Seeds of Human Potential

I have an odd habit. I peel an orange by first piercing it with a spoon and then moving the spoon all around under the rind until it easily lifts away. I have always done it this way since childhood and didn't know this was odd until one day when I was much older someone pointed it out to me. From then on, I began to notice that everyone else would peel an orange with a knife or more often simply cut the orange into quarters. To conform to societal norms, I started to use the other approaches but I still liked my way better. It just worked for me.

Life is kind of like that. We find out through education and our life experiences what works best for us. What habits lead to success and which don't. It doesn't matter whether someone else does something differently or not. We must integrate the knowledge that we continually acquire to develop and modify our habits for whatever purpose we seek to use them.

Let me refine this further since I am not suggesting that any sort of personal conduct you like is acceptable under any circumstances. Nor I am suggesting that we can't and shouldn't learn anything from anyone else regardless of its value. Quite to the contrary. We must constantly incorporate and build on the knowledge and lessons of others. But what I am suggesting is that there are often varying rational and legitimate ways of accomplishing a task and that within such realm of reasonableness, personal preference or comfort as to approach as opposed to regimented rigidity is often the distinguishing characteristic leading to success or failure.

There is no one right way to cook a meal or dance or play an instrument or to think. Each of us is unique in that we have different backgrounds, families, education, religious beliefs, likes and dislikes and interests. That diversity should be celebrated as it will inevitable lead to different options that would never have been discovered had only one methodology been deemed acceptable. We can often judge the quality of our personal and professional relationships by the freedom we are given to think and act in a manner that allows us to investigate and exploit our talents. For nothing is worse than enabling or permitting someone else, by complacency, fear or subjugation, to stunt our growth in the name of uniformity, when the seeds which enable us to continue to blossom intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and in all ways that a human being can are inextricably linked to such growth.

Virtually every significant scientific discovery or innovation has started with the question as to how can we do something either completely new and different or improve something that already exists. Every field of endeavor starts with or continually reverts to these questions.

Hundreds of years after Mozart and Beethoven penned their masterpieces, musicians are still interpreting their compositions to this day, to express their own unique point of view. And still hundreds of years from now people will still be doing the same as human imagination and experience are ever-evolving.

The nature of the human condition is to adapt to change. While that may lead to bouts of discomfort, it will also incite man's potential to do what has yet to done before. So, in homage to that same "can-do" spirit, consider using a spoon the next time you peel an orange. You may actually enjoy a new way of doing something so simple that never occurred to you before. At worst, the silliness of it will put a smile on your face.