The Black Dot

One day a professor arrived in a classroom and told his students there would be a surprise test.

They all waited anxiously for the test to begin. He handed out the tests with the text facing down, then asked the students to all turn over the papers at the same time and begin.

To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions on the paper, only a black dot. Upon seeing their faces, the professor said he wanted them to write about what they saw.

Everybody got started. At the end of the exam, the professor gathered all the papers in and started to read them aloud to the whole class.

All of them had explained the black dot and its position on the paper. After he had read them all, the professor explained he was not going to grade them, it was simply to give them something to think about: no one had written about the white part of the paper, everyone had focused on the black dot. The same can be said about life – we are all given a white piece of paper to enjoy, but we only ever focus on the black marks.

The dark spots are small compared to everything we have in our lives, but they are the ones which can pollute our minds.

What else is on your piece of paper?