The Elephant

When elephants are very young, they are trained by their masters with a cord around their leg to restrain and control them.

As they grow older, they become much bigger and stronger, yet they are still controlled by this thin cord around their leg. They don’t realize that they can break free at any moment. All they have to do is to have the will to do it. The reality is that they usually don’t. They still think that they can’t break free from the restraint.

People are like this, too. I remember reading of a young girl who was kidnapped for many months. In the beginning, the couple who grabbed her kept her hidden. As time went on, though, they took her along with them shopping. In order to escape, all she had to do was scream or run. She didn’t.

What kept her from doing so were threats of what might happen if she bolted. Fear kept her in captivity. Fortunately a law officer recognized her, went up to her and asked her if she was the person who had been kidnapped. In a second, the cords around her life vanished and none of the threats materialized. Her fear had been based on lies.

Aren’t we the same? Don’t we allow fear to limit our possibilities in life? We are too comfortable with who we are instead of focussing on who we can be. The fear of loss becomes greater than the expectation of what life can be. We allow ourselves to be controlled by negative thoughts, sometimes ones that go back to our childhood.

All it often takes is the realization that we really can break the cord that limits our potential. We can simply walk away and be free, that is, unless we choose to remain captive for the rest of our lives. And the choice is really ours. One is taking the safe, comfortable route; the other involves risk and doing something that we may never have done before. One can choose to soar like an eagle or merely peck away at the ground like a chicken.