"WE GOT MIXED UP!" A QUICK LESSON IN DELETION, DISTORTION & GENERALISATION

A buddy of mine, who has a penchant for collecting jokes from all over the world, has sent me the following story. [I have taken the liberty to make some minor changes because of spelling errors.]

It's likely to tickle your funny bone for a change, but more importantly, I thought it would serve as a fun illustration to show our brain's natural propensity to "distort" &/or "delete" &/or "generalise" our perspective of the world.

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons & laws by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the head monk to question this. He points out that if someone had made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault, which hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by & nobody sees the old monk. So, the young monk gets worried & goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall & wailing:

"We got mixed up! We got mixed up! We got mixed up!"

His forehead is all bloody & bruised, & he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old monk, "What's wrong, Father?"

With a choking voice, the old monk replies: "The original word in the manuscript is C E L E B R A T E."