A friend of mine was telling me last Friday that she had a family problem and didn’t know how to solve it quickly, as she had to work on the weekend. I quickly jumped in saying, ‘tell me what to do, I’ll cover for you.’
I’ve had these outings before when I offered to cover for one lady at the flower shop, another at the perfumery, another at a doctor’s office.
My friend smiled and said calmly: ‘It’s a bit more complicated than it looks.’
Right, I immediately realised what a mistake I was making. How proud I was to think that I could do that job, just like that, from one day to the next.
Often we see someone doing an activity discreetly, elegantly, and we have the feeling that we can it too. But we forget that, in fact, when someone manages to give the impression that something is easy, natural, a lot of work is hidden behind it, we forget that there are many details and years of practice, of studies that we don’t see.
There is an art of making something complicated look easy, simple. This art has a lot of experience behind it, a lot of learning, years of study, mistakes, and lessons learned.
It’s the same in other professions. We find it easy to give advice, to teach others. We forget that, if we want to do this job responsibly, we need to spend a lot of time preparing, studying, being curious, constantly researching, looking for what is new and what already exists.
Thales of Miletus said ‘the hardest thing in the world is to know yourself. The easiest is to give advice.’
In my desire to help, I risked offending a friend. But her gentleness helped us, made me reflect, and not overshadow the relationship.
