Cute Little Puppy

This is just a folk story. An old man of Baghdad dreamt that a great treasure lay hid in a certain spot in Egypt. He accordingly journeyed to Egypt, and there fell into the hands of the police. The police beat him severely on suspicion of being a thief. He told the police, all the particulars of his dream. On hearing him, one of them said, "You must be a fool to journey all this distance merely following a dream. I myself have many times dreamt of a treasure lying hid in a certain spot in Baghdad, but was never foolish enough to go there." The spot in Baghdad named by this person was none other than the house of this dream walker of Baghdad. This old story came to my mind as a saw a post of my friend in face book. He had given three pictures. On the first there was a few dots spread all over. In the next, an effort to connect these dots through lines was shown. In the third was the cute picture of a puppy which was shaped when all the dots were properly connected. The comment below read, “Knowledge alone is not useful unless we can make connections between what we know." 

This friend of mine, Shri Midhun is a just passed out engineer, who could successfully orient knowledge and experience into a beautiful theme. He is now the proud owner of http://fullforms.com/ the world’s first structured platform for Full forms. Every society we encounter thinks that it is great by the virtue of their bank balance and the preciseness of their manner management. They miserably lose in connecting knowledge and experience. 

Just last day, I read a few lines from one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Kerala. He was commenting on a remark of the Indian Prime ministerial candidate Shri Modi. He wrote, “Even though I am not agreeable to his political stands, but his comments ‘Hard work matters, not Harvard’ is good. It is true, hard work is more important than qualifications.” Shri Kochouseph, I should say, began his career selling his homebrew gadgets on a scooter and his knowledge blended with experience could make him the proud owner of many challenging enterprises. 

Knowledge precisely is the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject while experience is the knowledge of something gained through involvement in it or exposure through it. The more we try to successfully reinforce knowledge into product through hard earned experience; the world turns ours, whoever we are. A trip after a hidden treasure far off never pays.

Joseph Mattappally