A scientist was very worried about the problems of the world and was determined to find means to diminish them. He spent days enclosed in his laboratory searching for answers to his doubts. One day, his son, seven years old, invaded his sanctuary and decided to help him in his work. The busy scientist tried to make his son go out to play someplace else. Seeing that it would be impossible to get him out of there the father gave him something he hoped would keep him quiet and occupied so he could continue his important work.
He tore a map from the centerfold of a magazine, and, with a pair of scissors, cut the map in a hundred pieces. He handed the torn up map and a roll of tape to his son saying:
“Do you like puzzles? Then I’m going to give you the world to fix. Here is the world all broken. See if you can fix it! Do it all by yourself.”
He calculated that the child would take days to fix the map. Some hours later, he heard the voice of his son calling him calmly: “Father, Father, I already have done it all. I managed to finish it all!”
At the beginning the father could not believe the words of his son: “Would it be possible at his age to manage to reassemble a map he had never seen before?” Then the scientist took his eyes away from his desk, expecting to see India taped
next to Mexico and Canada stuck where the Congo was supposed to be. To his surprise the map was complete. All pieces had been placed in their right places. How could the child have been able to do it?
“You did not know how the world was, my son. How did you do it?”
“Father, I did not know how the world was, but when you removed the paper from the magazine to cut it, I saw that on the other side there was the figure of a man. When you gave me the world to fix, I tried but I couldn’t do it. Then I remembered about the man, I turned over the cuttings and started to fix the man. I know what a man is like. I managed to fix the man. I turned over the sheet and found that I had fixed the world.”
