Elvenia Gray-Sandiford
My father used to tell us folklore tales which all had a life lesson. I will share one with you:
There was a lioness who died in childbirth. A group of wild boars found the young cub suckling on the carcass. One of the mama boars convinced the others not to leave the cub to die beside his mother. They took him with them, and he was raised as the boar’s son.
The young lion would eat like the wild boars, and behave like a wild boar. When his tiny little roar would escape, he would do his best to swallow it and grunt like the wild boars. After all, he believed he was a wild boar. The older he got, the more his differences became more profound. The young boars teased him about his differences. So he kept his roar inside, and kept on grunting like a boar so that he wasn’t ridiculed or rejected.
One day, the young lion went for a walk and came upon a big lion who asked why he was alone. The young lion grunted at the big lion. The lion asked, “Why are you behaving like a wild boar?”
The young lion told him “Because I am a wild boar.”
The big lion said, “No, you’re not, someone told you a lie. You’re a lion.” Big Lion took him to the water and told him to look at his reflection. “Tell me what you see.”
The cub said, “I see you, but I don’t see me.” The big lion asked him how many reflections he could see in the water, and the young lion replied “Two. There’s you, and there is another you.” The big lion responded, “The other me you see, is you. You are not a boar; you are a lion, so start behaving like a lion.”
The big lion took him to his den, where there was some leftover meat. The big lion began to eat, but the young lion said “No way! This smells like my momma wild boar.” The big lion insisted that he should taste it, and he reluctantly did.
The young lion started choking so hard he started roaring. The more he choked, the louder and fiercer his roar got. The meat also tasted much better than when he was eating as a wild boar. The young lion opened his mouth and released all the roars that he had locked up inside him. It was then he realized that he wasn’t who he thought himself to be. And from that day on, he lived like a lion.
The moral of the story? Sometimes we are socialized to behave like people we’re not. Some of us go through life wearing the cloak of someone else. We remain comfortable in that place of dysfunction because we fear rejection, ridicule, judgment, and criticism, instead of moving to an authentic version of ourselves.
Each of us is more powerful when we know the truth of who we are. The graveyard is the most expensive real estate, because therein lies a lot of priceless potential that never came to fruition.
There’s a lion living in all of us. We are stronger than we think, and we need not give in to the wild boar version of ourselves. When we find our true selves, we won’t be limited to the life we’ve been living. We learn there is way more to us than meets the eye. Opinions of others don’t validate us anymore; they are bad nutrition for us to live off.
When we find the truth of who we are, then we will believe we are not too old, too young, too fat, too skinny, too big, too small, too much or too little, or too anything, to really chase or experience our dreams.
editorial@accjournal.ca
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