One of the funniest and wisest commentaries on human nature is the cartoon strip Hagar the Horrible. In one cartoon Hagar's son, Hamlet, asks his blank-faced father if he could help put his model ship in a bottle. Hagar frowns and proceeds to lecture the boy on how he should be more industrious in seeking solutions to his problems, how he should read and reason and not wait for the answers to his problems to be handed to him. Hamlet mumbles, "Thanks, Dad." Then, in the next room, he tells his mother, "Dad didn't know how, either."

Now in one sense, Hagar is right. Guidance and encouragement, when coupled with self-reliance, can often be more valuable than those easy solutions to our problems given to us by others. As the old saying puts it: "Give a hungry man a fish and you feed him for a…