Do we make ourselves smarter? One of my colleagues has retired recently. When people from HR department made a mistake of her birthday and noticed her to retire earlier, she got very upset. Working for the government or any job like that, you want to stay at work as long as you can. Since it means money, power etc. This reminds me of something that people sometimes do in the country. Obviously, they think they are smarter than others. In our country, when children turn to seven years old, they are admitted by primary schools. But listed as one of those countries that pay much attention to their education, many parents here prefer to send their children to school before seven years old. So there is a compromise to meet this requirement. If you want to send your child to school before seven years old, you have to pay additional money to the school such as 2000 yuan for one month in short. In that case, if your child is four months younger than seven, you will have to pay eight thousands yuan to school just let your child to be accepted. Is it unfair? How can a couple control and give birth to their baby after September when the new semester starts so they don’t need to pay the extra money? Many smarter parents figure out a better way to handle this by changing their babies’ birthday on paper, and many follow this strategy. It takes some efforts to do that, but it saves lots of money for the family. However, if the parents have ever hold a vision of the future, the possible consequence of this no-harm cheating, they might hesitate to take any action. Do we really make ourselves smarter? Another story was brought up by a friend today. She told me of her condominium she intended to sell but she would not get the value of the house deserved. How that comes? I want her to clarify her story. She told me that it was all because of one of her colleagues’ stupid decision. Following the first tide of housing commercialization in China, she got the right to own the department her school provided with, and she lived with many other teachers in that building. The money they needed to pay for the apartment based on the floor space of the house. Before that, there had had no official paper record of those departments they lived in. One of her colleagues took the responsibility of measuring and filing the papers. My friend and many others were told that when measuring it, they didn’t cover the balcony of each condominium which it should be covered. Everyone was happy and thought it was smart to neglect the space of the balcony so that it saved money for all of them. The cost of house has been skyrocketing ever since. Now since on the official paper, it doesn’t cover the square of the balcony and it won’t be counted in when if someone wants to put it into market. Overall, they all lose a large amount of money because of this “smart” choice at the time. When we look around, it’s not difficult to find people around us who are willing to take advantage of everything and make any effort to benefit themselves. They count on any step they take and they think they are the smartest ones. However, our channel vision has limited how far we can go. I guess the wisdom of human being never falls on people who are rush for self-benefit.