the circus elephant
When I was a kid I loved circuses and what I liked most about circuses were the animals. Also to me as to others, the elephant caught my attention. During the performance, the enormous beast displayed its enormous weight, size and strength… but after its performance and until a while before returning to the stage, the elephant was held only by a chain that imprisoned one of its legs to a small stake driven into the ground.
However, the stake was only a tiny piece of wood barely buried a few inches into the ground. And although the chain was thick and powerful, it seemed obvious to me that this animal capable of uprooting a tree with its own strength could easily uproot the stake and flee.
The mystery is evident: What keeps it then? Why don’t you run away?
When I was five or six years old, I asked my father about the mystery of the elephant. One of them explained to me that the elephant did not escape because it was trained. He then asked the obvious question: If he is trained, why do they chain him? I don’t recall receiving any consistent response. Over time I forgot about the mystery of the elephant and the stake … and only remembered it when he met others who had also asked the same question. Some years ago I discovered that, luckily for me, someone had been wise enough to find the answer:
“The circus elephant does not escape because it has been tied to a similar stake since it was very small.”
I closed my eyes and imagined the tiny newborn attached to the stake. I am sure that at that moment the little elephant pushed, pulled and sweated trying to get free. And despite all his efforts, he couldn’t. The stake was certainly very strong for him. He would swear that he fell asleep exhausted and that the next day he tried again, and also the other and the one that followed… until one day, a terrible day for his history, the animal accepted his impotence and resigned himself to his fate.
This huge and powerful elephant doesn’t escape because he THINKS HE CAN’T.
He has a record and memory of his helplessness, of that helplessness that is felt shortly after birth. And the worst thing is that he has never seriously questioned that record again. Never…he never tried to test his strength again…
Each one of us is a bit like that elephant: we go around the world tied to hundreds of stakes that take away our freedom. We live believing that a lot of things “we can’t do” simply because once we tried and we couldn’t. We record in our memory “I can’t… I can’t and I never will”, losing one of the greatest blessings a human being can count on: Faith.
The only way to know is to try again, putting ALL OUR HEART and all our effort into the attempt as if everything depended on us, but at the same time, totally trusting God as if everything depended on him.
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