The Baby Elephant
This issue marks our four year anniversary of publishing this magazine! It was first launched in 2010 by Jenifer West, and has been serving the community for a total of six years.
There’s a bit of restlessness in the air. Some of it is being fueled by the election shenanigans, and the majority of it is coming from you. You’re done. In fact, you’re overdone and you’re way past due and ready for real change. Most politicians talk a good game, but seldom deliver. Remember that Obama incessantly touted change during his initial campaign, and in the end, what did we get? So here we are again, watching the big show, thinking to ourselves that this seems awfully familiar. You do realize that the best thing we could all do is choose to stop watching. That’s right. Go and cancel your cable TV subscription. No viewers equals no show. Isn’t there some other way we can still watch NFL football and The Walking Dead without cable?
Whether we believe it or not, we have nothing but choices. So why do many of us do the same thing week after week, year after year? It’s called conditioning, and we’re not solely to blame for this. You see, we’re born into a world where we perceive that our very existence depends on our ability to fit in. In turn, we learn to follow and not question. We grow up to be like the circus elephant.
When still a baby, the elephant is tethered by a very thick rope to a stake firmly hammered into the ground. It tries several times to get free, but it lacks the strength to do so. After a year, the stake and the rope are still strong enough to keep a small elephant tethered, although it continues to try, unsuccessfully, to get free. At this point, the animal realizes that the rope will always be too strong and so it gives up. When it reaches adulthood, the elephant can still remember how for a long time it had wasted its energies trying to escape captivity. At this stage, the trainer can tether the elephant with a slender thread tied to a broom handle, and the elephant will make no attempt to escape to freedom.
So, who is going to step into their power and facilitate real change? We were presented with this clue during a speech Barack Obama gave to supporters a year before he first took office: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” All the answers lie within, and remember that there is nothing to fear. Fear is typically a response to something future-based, and we know from experience that the greater majority of what we project typically never occurs.
Jerry & Pat Hocek, Publishers
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