Lesson Five: Look Beyond the Fingers
“How many do you see?”
In a powerful scene from Patch Adams, Robin Williams’ character sits with Arthur Mendelson, a brilliant man whose mind has frayed at the edges. Arthur holds up four fingers and demands: “How many do you see?” Patch answers plainly: “Four.” Arthur grows agitated. “No, no! Look beyond the fingers!”
It takes a moment, but Patch eventually lets his eyes lose focus, and his fingers double. Four becomes eight. Arthur lights up: “You’re focusing on the problem. If you focus on the problem, you can’t see the solution. Never focus on the problem - look beyond the fingers!”
It sounds like a riddle, but it’s a metaphor we often miss in our own lives.
We fixate on what’s visible. We count what’s wrong. The stress, the weight, the regret, the list of failures. We say “four” because it feels accurate. It is accurate. But it’s also incomplete. Like Patch, we miss what’s just beyond. What’s possible if we shift how we see the world.
What’s Seen vs. What’s True
Most people live reactively, myself included. They interpret their lives through events - what happened, what went wrong, what’s currently hard. But if you stare too long at the circumstances, you miss the context of the situation. You miss the deeper pattern forming behind the noise. The lesson isn’t obvious. The solution isn’t in the stress. As Naval Ravikant says, “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” We keep chasing fixes to problems we probably shouldn’t be focused on in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle that almost always leaves us hopeless.
When we look beyond the fingers, we start asking better questions:
What am I not seeing clearly right now?
Where is my focus creating more friction than freedom?
Am I staring at a symptom instead of finding the source?
We stop being problem identifiers and start becoming pattern breakers.
Looking Back — and Forward
Honestly, I’ve spent years of my life staring at the problem. I felt like I was behind. Wondering if I’d missed something others had figured out. I used to think the solution was doing more, fixing more, proving more. But now, I realize I was just stuck counting fingers. Obsessing over the obvious and ignoring the real issue: my perspective.
Now, when life feels tight or uncertain, I try to pause. Blur the fear. Step back from the problem. Ask what it’s hiding because most problems are disguises. They’re pointing to growth, if you can see through them.
Final Thought
Vision isn’t just about seeing clearly - it’s about seeing differently.
Don’t obsess over the immediate. Don’t define yourself by the visible. Sometimes, the only way forward is to soften your gaze, blur the edges, and let the deeper meaning come into focus.
It’s not always easy to do. Sometimes, looking beyond the fingers means realizing that the solution you were chasing—whether in your career, fitness, faith, or elsewhere — was never the right move to begin with.
Swallowing the truth that something you were sure would fix everything—something you invested in, believed in, and maybe even built your identity around—turns out to be another distraction—a temporary relief posing as permanent progress.
The future belongs to those who stop counting problems and start spotting possibilities.
Look beyond the fingers.