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The Cookie Thief – Twisted Assumptions, Judgments & Perception

The Cookie Thief – Twisted Assumptions, Judgments & Perception Valerie Cox Wayne Dyer Douglas Adams Jay Shetty
The Cookie Thief – Twisted Assumptions, Judgments & Perception Valerie Cox Wayne Dyer Douglas Adams Jay Shetty
The Cookie Thief – Twisted Assumptions, Judgments & Perception

How willing are you to see clearly now?

In 1998, Dr. Wayne Dyer released a video recording where he read a poem by Valerie Cox “The Cookie Thief.” The poem/story reveals what happens to one woman when she makes false assumptions leading to wrong judgments, twisted perceptions and ultimately deep embarrassment.

Valerie Cox’s story has been retold many times in video, and motivational teacher Jay Shetty has also recorded a version although, he doesn’t credit author Valerie Cox. The actual story of the cookie thief perhaps owes its origin to Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, 1984, where he tells the same story based on his own real experience set in a train station and involving a biscuit rather than a cookie. There are also similar stories that have appeared in British newspapers in the 1970s.

Nonetheless, Dr. Dyer shares a quote pertaining to a lesson from The Cookie Thief about our rush to judgment: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Unknown author – Dr. Dyer falsely attributes it to Mark Twain.)

The poem offers various lessons
Do you look at every angle of each situation? Do you question your own assumptions? Do you react without first fully analyzing the situation? Do you seek to understand before making a judgment? Do you make a conclusion and stick to it, unwilling to challenge your own bias?

A) I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain’t so.
B) Wisdum don’t konsist in knowing more that iz new, but in knowing less that iz false.
– “Everybody’s Friend or Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor”, 1874

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in. If you challenge your own, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You’ll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.”
– Alan Alda, 1980

The Cookie Thief
by Valerie Cox

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops.
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”

With each cookie she took, he took one too,
When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other,
She snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude,
Why he didn’t even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.

As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
The others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul, (c) 1996 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.”
“The Kingdom of God is Within You” by Leo Tolstoy, 1894

The Power of Perception
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
– William Blake

“The light for your earthly life is perception. Therefore, if your perception is without fault, your whole life shall be enlightened. If your perception be evil, your whole life shall be darkened by it; if the light for you is darkness, how deep will your darkness become?”
– Matthew 6:22, 23 – Khaboris Manuscript

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