"The Genius of 'Common Sense'"

What most refer to as common sense is actually a form of genius. I define it as 'the ability to take a complex situation or idea and reduce it to it's simplest form'. People who possess this quality are known as being assertive and being the type of person who gets things done. 

As an illustration of this, take a man with an apple tree. This man has two sons. The oldest son is known to be "book smart". The younger has what is referred to as "common sense". The apple tree is ugly and useless, producing terrible fruit. The man complains year after year about how the fruit is terrible and falls to the ground and rots. Finally, he commands his sons to fix the problem.

The older son makes a plan. He thinks through the best way to pick up the rotten fruit, sorting through scores of options and tools to make it efficient. He then tries to think of a way to prevent the tree from producing fruit. He cannot, so he fashions a long-term plan to pick up the fruit every year. When he finished his plan, he went out to the tree.

When he arrived, he was surprised at what he saw. Where the tree used to be, were his younger brother, a chainsaw, and a trailer full of limbs. You see, instead of complicating the issue, the younger brother reduced the situation to its simplest form. He immediately identified the tree as the source of the rotten fruit, and removed the tree. It was quick, efficient, and permanent. One of these brothers is a genius, I'll let you decide which one it is.

-M.W.

I have never met a useless man that had the ability to quickly find and eliminate the root of a problem. In the words of Ross Perot…”Whoever finds the snake, kills the snake.”