Sheepskin Effect

The Sheepskin effect is the mind's way of saving time. Sometimes the saved time costs more than it buys.

The effect is strongest precisely when nobody mentions it. Awareness does not kill it, but awareness does give you a vote. Without awareness you are not even in the room where the decision is made.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Think of the grandfather who plants a mango tree he will never sit under. Ask him why, and he will look at you as if the question were the strange thing.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. You will meet this idea again this week, wearing different clothes. Now you will recognise it.