Context Is More Important Than Information

Muntasir was suffering from cold, so went to a nearby doctor. Doctor prescribed couple of medicines along with some advice. Upon reaching home, when his mom asked what the doctor said, he smilingly answered that the doctor uncle asked him to eat chocolates. Wife totally confused as couldn't think of any relation between cold & chocolate. I let this continue for a while to see if he says anything else but he kept on only saying he has been asked to eat chocolates. And then, I had to jump in before wife could go mad. I explained her that though he is not lying, but he is only telling an incomplete story. Whenever we take our kids to doctor, in general any doctor at stretch talks about avoiding ice cream-cold drinks-chocolate. In this case, as he was suffering from cold, the doctor advised him that he can eat chocolates but a complete no-no to ice cream & cold drinks. Muntasir did not lie but he very smartly chose to narrate only that part of the story that would benefit him.

And the same thing holds true for our day-to-day life. Data/Information without the proper context is just a number/text and is left to be used as one wishes. I remember one senior colleague of mine once told that nowadays he does not trust the news channel much as he does not know what is being not shown. The more is the data, the more is the scope of manipulation/misinterpretation. Therefore it is important to give importance/act only when one has the complete information along with the context, otherwise it is best to just ignore. The above incident could be just a funny act of a young kid with no harmful intention, but very often we fell prey to such incidents and end up act wrongfully…