While You Sit On The Elephant

Dear loving people,

A friend of mine – Victoire shared an African proverb that was read on the BBC last Tuesday 4^th September 2012. It read thus “When you are on top of an elephant, do not pretend there is no dew on the grass”. You can’t imagine how much this thought provoking proverb got me reflecting, it’s even been used during the ongoing 2012 Obama campaign.

Can you imagine for a second how often we forget the people who toiled with us to get us where we are today? Their empathy and dedication to us while we needed them is soon forgotten. We ignore at times even hate them once we attain what some have termed ‘glory’. N.D. Wilson writes “Self-loathing and self-worship can easily be the same thing. You hate the small sack of fluids and resentments that you are, and you would go to any length, and betray anything and anyone, to preserve it.”

You must remember at all times that excellent builders equally master how to scatter. N.D. Wilson continues to say that “Your life is your own, your glory is your glory, but you will lose it if you keep it for yourself. Grasp it for the sake of others...”

When you are on top of an elephant, keep it at the center of your mind how you got there, there will come a time when the elephant will stop walking and you will need to climb down. The very people who got you up there will be the ones to hold your hand as you climb down. If you are the type that used your past ‘glory’ to abuse, subdue and shunt the same people who toiled so hard to get you up there in the first place, rest assured the fall from grace to grass will be catastrophic.

You can only pretend there is no dew on the grass once sitting on an elephant because you forget so soon the life you led before climbing up there, you now think you sail above the issues that once bogged you and the people you now neglect.

N.D. Wilson advice “Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.”

You must remain a man of the people even when you cruise in glory on the elephant. Your capacity to remain a man of the people at such times is proportionate to your determination to shunt evil and N.D. Wilson again, has this to say “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself”

For always, remember that there is a price tag on every option in life. Victory at the end will be on the side of those who choose the positive options of life.

Remain blessed