Staked Down With a Twig
Circus elephants present a containment problem. It’s hard to keep a big elephant cage around wherever you go. So when baby circus elephants are trained, they are staked down to a pole with a chain. The young elephants pull and struggle against the chain for a while and then learn the limitations of the situation.
Soon the elephant can be staked down with a wooden stick. The elephant could easily break the confinement but it doesn’t try. It’s already learned what it can and can’t do. To add further insult to the awesome, unrecognized power of the beast, by adulthood many of the elephants can be training to pull up their own stake and move it on command and then remain in the spot that they re-staked themselves too.
I think about the circus elephant staking itself down often. Mostly when I hear my colleagues and friends talk about the obstacles that prevent them from recognizing their goals. You know what I’m talking about. All that stuff we’re waiting for before we can start really moving toward our vision for our life.
When I look at the awesome human potential that we carry around within us and then I consider the little, insignificant things we chose to see as barriers, I think about the elephant.
