A trader in fine oriental rugs came across a thief trying to sell a rug he had stolen. From his spot on the street corner he shouted, “One hundred dollars! Who will give me one hundred dollars?” The trader approached the thief and asked, “You are selling such a fine rug for only one hundred dollars?” To which the thief replied, “You mean there is a number larger than one hundred?”

When I was a child, I asked my father, an insurance man, why he didn’t run for mayor. I don’t remember why I wanted Dad to be mayor. Maybe I figured the most important man I knew ought to have the most important job I knew about. But probably, I thought there were some kind of perks that would go with that job. However, Dad made some rather passionate comments about how business people can’t afford to hold public office. He explained that hard decisions have to be made that can alienate customers, and so on and so on . . . . A few years later Dad was a city commissioner. When I reminded him of what he’d said previously, he just looked puzzled. He said something like, “Well, I guess I see things differently now.... If my customers are going to get mad because I make decisions that I consider to be in the best interest of the town, then just let ‘em take their business somewhere else.”

Ken Wilber is a transpersonal psychologist whose spiritual leanings are far more eastern than traditionally western. However, he provides one of the most compelling images of adult development that I’ve ever come across.

Wilbur imagines adult development as a multi-storied building. Biology seems to drive us through childhood development, but as we enter adulthood, it is as though we have entered the first floor of a skyscraper. And on this floor we find a set of interesting furniture. We begin to arrange this furniture. We move the couch over here, and the table over there. Then perhaps we decide the bed would fit best in the corner. We shift and move until we have it all exactly the way we want. Then something happens. We get kind of complacent, comfortably bored and familiar with our furniture. We lay down on the couch, turn on the tube, and we veg-out for a while.

At some point we grow restless. Or perhaps we are jarred out of our complacency by some unexpected event. We begin to ask the question, “Is this all there is?” “Is this the best I can hope for?” We begin to look around. We suddenly discover something that has been there all the time. How could we have missed it? Its an elevator. We nervously press the button. The door opens. We step on. The elevator carries us up one floor. The door opens. We step off. And we are faced with a whole new set of furniture that we didn’t even realize was in the building. We think, “Now that couch would look just right over there....”

This happens every time we mature to a point that allows us to see possibilities we previously could not imagine. Suddenly we realize there are numbers greater than 100! My dad had moved to a different floor. He was playing with different furniture. And it allowed him to consider an approach to life that was previously unimaginable.