Why do you have to be sure?
Why are we obsessed with needing to know?
Why must things be just so?
Who has promised us that it should feel okay?
I hope that my cadence is present here as I ask these questions. To me these are not flippant questions. I am not throwing my hands up over exasperated. In my view these are very serious questions. Our blindness, never asking them of ourselves, binds us. It is the stake in this story below. It is from these questions that we can find our release. They are frail and frayed expectations and demands we are conditioned by.
We can learn to live in imperfection.
We can learn to live in discomfort.
We can learn to live in not knowing.
Here’s one of the most profound short stories I’ve ever read. The author of it is unknown but its message is of utmost importance.
As my friend 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 the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.
“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size of 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.” My friend 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 failed at it once before? How many of us are being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us? How many of us have avoided trying something new because of a limiting belief? Worse, how many of us are being held back by someone else’s limiting beliefs?
