Someone stands up with great conviction, declares:
‘If I hadn’t finished secondary school, I couldn’t possibly have gone to university.’
The room falls silent. The birds stop singing. Scientists drop their notebooks. And somewhere in a corner of the universe, Sir Isaac Newton rises abruptly from his tomb simply to applaud. For at long last, humankind has discovered that to reach the first floor, one must first pass through the ground floor.
How revolutionary.
Nobody wanted to dispute the statement. And therein lies its peculiar distinction: a claim that cannot possibly be wrong cannot possibly teach us anything either. It opens no debate, adds nothing to our understanding, and stirs no one to thought. It simply hangs in the air, true and empty at once, like a glass we hold out with pride, though there is nothing in it.
Tomorrow, perhaps, the next great discovery will arrive:
‘If I hadn’t been born, I couldn’t possibly have had a birthday.’
Or:
‘If I hadn’t eaten, I couldn’t possibly feel full.’
Or even:
‘If there were no sea, I couldn’t possibly drown.’
The day after, someone will no doubt hold a press conference to announce that rain makes the ground wet. The world does indeed move forward thanks to thinking of this calibre.
The Donkey at the Palace Gates
Once upon a time, an old donkey stood before the gates of the palace of learning. His coat had been neatly groomed, his gait made suitably dignified, and he said proudly to the other animals passing by:
‘Had I not crossed that bridge, I would never have reached this palace.’
Everyone nodded. It was true, after all. Not one of them could deny it.
But a wise old owl, who had been watching from a branch, asked quietly:
‘And what, precisely, is it that you wish to tell us?’
The donkey fell silent. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then gazed at the distant bridge as though it might answer on his behalf. For everyone already knew that a bridge links the two banks of a river. That is not news; it is scenery. And nobody has ever been awarded a prize for pointing out the scenery.
What makes a person worthy of admiration is not the fact that they once crossed a bridge, but what they learnt along the way: whom they helped en route, what obstacles they faced, and how they had changed by the time they reached the other side. Two donkeys can cross the very same bridge. What sets them apart is what each carries home.
The wise do not busy themselves announcing that a ladder helped them climb. They show what they did once they reached the top. They know that a ladder is merely a tool, and a tool is never an achievement for the person who simply uses it.
And so, once more, we return to that historic sentence:
‘If I hadn’t finished secondary school, I couldn’t possibly have gone to university.’
Quite right.
And if you haven’t got a ticket, you can’t possibly get into the cinema. If you haven’t got a passport, you can’t possibly fly abroad. If you haven’t got a boat, you can’t possibly become a skipper. If you haven’t got trainers, you can’t possibly run in the race. All perfectly true, all perfectly logical, and none of it proves anything about who you are.
The trouble is that nobody judges a skipper’s greatness by the fact that he once owned a boat. Passengers do not ask whether the vessel was ever bought; they want to know whether the captain stays calm when a wave as tall as a house slams into the hull. They judge how he steers through the storm, how he reads the sky, and how he brings his whole crew safely home.
Of course, being grateful for the stages one has completed is admirable. There is nothing wrong with remembering the bridge that once carried us across. What goes wrong is when that memory becomes our only provision, as though the journey ended at the riverbank and the rest of life could be spent pointing backwards.
For a certificate is merely a door. What determines a person’s worth is what they do after walking through it: what they accomplish, what they learn, and who is better off for their presence.
If all one can boast of is having once passed through a door, then the hinges may well deserve more credit than the person. At least the hinges turn up for work every single day, and never once ask for applause.
