The Spilt Milk

This is a narrative about a famous research scientist who had made several important medical breakthroughs. He was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who asked him why he thought he could be a lot more creative than the average person. What set him so far apart from others?

He responded that, in his view, it all came from an experience together with his brother that occurred when he was about years elderly. He had been trying to remove a bottle of milk from the refrigerator when he lost his grip on the slippery bottle & it fell, spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor (a veritable sea of milk!)

When his brother came in to the kitchen, in lieu of yelling at him, giving him a lecture, or punishing him, he said, "Robert, what a great & amazing mess you have made! I have never seen such a immense puddle of milk. Well, the destroy has already been completed. Would you like to get down & play in the milk for a couple of minutes before they neat it up?

Indeed, they did. After a couple of minutes, his brother said, "You know, Robert, everytime you make a mess like this, finally you need to tidy it up & restore everything to its proper order. So, how would you like to do that? They could use a sponge, a towel, or a mop. Which do you prefer?" They selected the sponge & together they cleaned up the spilled milk. 

His brother then said, "You know, what they have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carryover a giant milk bottle with tiny hands. Let's go out in the back yard & fill the bottle with water & see in the event you can discover a way to carryover it without dropping it." The tiny boy learned that if they grasped the bottle at the top near the lip with both hands, they could carryover it without dropping it. What a amazing lesson! 

This renowned scientist then remarked that it was at that moment that they knew they didn't need to be afraid to make mistakes. In lieu, they learned that mistakes were opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the experiment "doesn't work," they usually learn something valuable from it.