A friend recently shared a penetrating parable with me.
He grew up in a prominent South American country, and he tells me his grandmother–he didn’t identify her as maternal or paternal–that she was a primary parenting/mentoring figure in his life. A faithful and wise woman.
“One day, when I was a small boy, she took me to a circus,” he began. “She, herself,” he added, “had once worked in the circus.”
He described her pointing out to him a giant circus elephant that was tethered, by a strong rope, to a tree stump. As large as the stump was, his grandmother asked nonetheless, “Wouldn’t you think that an elephant that size could still pull that stump out of the ground–or at least break the rope, thick as it may be?”
“Sure,” my friend, her little grandson replied.
And then she explained that the elephant had been conditioned not to.
“When he was just a baby elephant, he was tied, in the same way, to a similar tree stump or stake in the ground. And when he was so much smaller, he wasn’t strong enough to free himself.”
“Elephants are known for having an excellent memory,” she then added. “And that elephant–that’s how he remembers–and even today, when he has grown so much bigger and stronger, how he still thinks of himself. As being too small and too weak to pull that stump or break the rope.”
My friend’s grandmother–her “elephant parable”–is it a worthwhile reminder in at least a couple of different directions?
For instance:
No matter how much bigger and stronger any of us may have become, are there still some things–likely moral principles–that we should forever remember and thus consider ourselves “too small” to “break”?
And conversely, how about all the ways we too often continue to allow ourselves to be tethered, powerlessly and helplessly, to outmoded or contaminated beliefs–sometimes, even mis-information–that sabotages or minimizes healthy and important growth and change so necessary to becoming ourselves at out best?
