The Old Gentleman and the Doctor

**muhamedr** · 27-11-2010, 07:59 PM

Once there was an old gentleman who suddenly lost his sight. He lived in a very
large house on a hill. By moving from tree to tree, he made his way carefully down
and into town. He asked the first person he met to lead him to Dr. Brown’s office.
Dr. Brown was not a very good physician. He loved to read and was distracted
by books. He talked often about novels instead of a patient’s problem. He was,
however, the only town doctor.
“If you restore my sight,” the old gentleman said, “I will be able to read again
and I will talk to you about books. If you talk about books instead of helping me, I
will remain blind, and you will have no one to really listen to you.”
The doctor was surprised. In truth, he did not realize how much his talk of books
got in the way of helping people. Nor did he realize how lonely he was for someone
to really listen to him. And so he turned from novels to medical books and found a
way to cure the old gentleman. While gathering this medical information, the doctor
kept seeing his other patients. He was astonished by how much happier they seemed
when he had no new books to talk about. It occurred to him that they needed
someone to listen to them too. And so everything changed. The old gentleman’s
sight was restored, and the two readers exchanged books and sometimes talked late
into the evening. You might say that the old gentleman cured the doctor’s blindness
too.