One of the organizations I volunteered with independently – a non-profit in a developing country – was involved in the construction of a new building complex. The project was quite large; lots of time, work and money went into this. One day there was a meeting with various stakeholders – community members, the director of the organization, staff members, donors, etc. – and it transpired at that meeting that one of the problems was that the stairs were way too steep. This is of course quite a problem after the stairs have already been built. But a quick-thinking staff member came up with a solution on the spot – they could put wide, thin, perfectly shaped stones on the stairs to solve this. Someone else pointed out that this wouldn’t work – they’d just be making all of the steps higher, but the difference between them would remain the same.

The odd part of the story to me was, as I hadn’t been there, a staff member was re-telling this tale – but laughing at the one who had said the stones wouldn’t work. But of course that wouldn’t work, I though – the person was right!

Certainly making the best of things, being an optimist, and coping when things don’t go as planned are vital skills. In some situations, particularly in the developing world, you really have to be ready to improvise regularly, and I doubt that the steep stairs were truly an insurmountable problem.

But in this case the optimism seemed to go so far that the person telling the story really couldn’t see the other side of it – that this problem was not so easily fixed.

To be honest, I’m still not sure what to make of this story. Maybe the lesson is that what seems like the most obvious thing in the world to one person is of negligible truth or importance to another. Maybe it has something to do with different cultural expectations about planning. Or maybe it’s just one more of those rather insignificant yet bizarre events you come across traveling and/or volunteering.