Knowing what the problem is

He says, if you're going to solve a problem, it helps if you know what the problem is. For instance, says he, 'I've always been afraid of dogs. Some little old girl comes walking down the sidewalk, with a great Dane on the leash, and says she's not afraid of him at all. A poodle runs out, and I take off!' He's over six feet tall—I can just see him running from a poodle! He says this caused him a lot of embarrassment in his life, and it finally became necessary for him to look at the reason that he was afraid of dogs. And he looked and looked, and he started to turn the pages of his life back, and he got clear back to where he was seven years old. He remembered that, when he was seven, a little dog bit him. But he said that didn't completely satisfy him. So he looked at it again, and he saw that the reason the dog bit him was that he was chasing the little girl at the time. Now, says he, 'All my life, I've been chasing women and getting in trouble and running from dogs, and dogs never were my problem in the first place.' So he says it helps to know the problem.

(Chuck C.)