We are in the 21st century, or is it the 22nd or are we still stuck in the 20th century, where though the “needle of time” has moved forward crossing into the 21st; many of us may be still wondering what has happened? Where did mostly everyone go?
Everything else around us looks just the same. Many people seem to reminisce the past, even though the past may have just been last week. Memories of the past are a plenty. Each moment that has yet to come, is the future. When it arrives, it is the present. When it is gone, it is the past.
Likewise, when we aim for our goals, that is the future. We work hard towards them, we put in all our effort towards those goals. This is the present. At the end of the given time, we did not achieve it or them. It becomes the past. Some of us have the courage to try again and again. We failed two or three times or even more. We give up.
Many of us will have “The Elephant Rope” belief that even after many years, it is no use of trying, no use of breaking free from the tied rope. That maybe we have grown wiser, learned and gained experience which we could use to possibly help us achieve our goals.
But then, what if we fail…again, everyone around us is going to laugh at us and think us foolish. It is better if we don’t try again. People would have already forgotten our failures in the past. Don’t relive it again. It is better this way. We won’t have to go through the embarrassment again, the ridicule, the “I failed…yet again”. We condition ourselves to make our decisions on what we perceive others will think of us.
We will forever carry the “What if…we tried again?” And we achieve our goals, our dreams… We will never know unless we…
The Elephant Rope (story)
As a man was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.
He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” the trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”
The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.
Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we were taught from young that we could not do it, or it simply was “not our place to do it”, or we failed at it once before?
Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the struggle in life.
The moral of the story is that we can become conditioned to believe in our own limitations, just like the elephant. However, if we challenge these beliefs and push past our perceived limitations, we can achieve much more than we thought possible.
NOTES
Elephants, the largest land animals on the planet, are among the most exuberantly expressive of creatures. Joy, anger, grief, compassion, love; the finest emotions reside within these hulking masses.
