Once upon a time there were big and small fishes seperated in a transparent glass aquarium by a transparent glass divider.
Now the feed of the big fishes were the small fishes. And so the big fishes swam to go and eat the small fishes. And every time the big fishes tried to go to catch the small fishes it got hurt by the transparent glass divider in the glass aquarium.
The big fishes continued to try to catch the small fishes but could not do so. Finally they gave up and did not continue to try to catch the small fishes anymore.
After this, Professor Irving Lee who was conducting this experiment removed the glass divider and guess what------
The big fishes were roaming about the small fishes not even trying to catch them because they learnt from their previous experience that they could not. This way the big fishes died amidst plenty of food, just because their brain learnt that they could not get their food by previous experience.
A similar experiment was conducted on Monkeys. Food was kept at a height in a cage so that the monkey could not get at it. Every time the monkey jumped to reach the food, the food was out of reach and after some time the monkey stopped trying to get the food.
Then the food was slightly lowered so that the monkey could jump and fetch the food. And guess what, with one big mighty jump the monkey jumped and got its food.
We learn from this story of fishes and monkeys that the monkeys are more clever than fishes. Monkeys will grab food if they possibly can even if previous attempts failed. Fishes cannot think as well as monkeys do.
And we human beings sometimes copy fishes and do not see our possibilites, chances, options, etc etc even in the midst of plenty of them.....
GK.