So, you’ve heard the story, right, the one where you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and he jumps right back out. The story further goes that if you put the same frog into a pot of cool water and gently increase the temperature to a level of boiling, he will remain there until he boils to death. The hypothesis is that the change in temperature is so gradual, the frog does not realize it’s boiling to death!
Well, it turns out this story is surrounded by much debate and controversy as to whether IT is true or not.
The purpose of today’s blog is not to prove or disprove this story, but rather examine the metaphor it represents. Interestingly, sometimes stories that themselves may not be true, can still contain truth within them. It’s a strange but frequently true phenomenon. To me this story illustrates the difference between gradual long-term change vs. sudden change. I can think of thousand ways to illustrate this idea, but the “frog tale” is one the more widely shared and popular ones out there. Let’s note a few other situations that could occur to us in real life.
If you live in a home, it can be subject to any number of potential calamities. One of these could be a fire. Fire is an interesting energy in that it is both a creative and destructive force. People have literally lost their home in a matter of hours to the fury of fire. I have never experienced this, but I can imagine it’s a devastating feeling. One that hits hard and fast and causes those left standing and gazing at what used contain their possessions and the shelter they enjoyed on a daily basis, feeling deeply wounded and devastated. This represents a swift and furious manner in which one’s home could be destroyed. The result being one must quickly take actions to seek new shelter and deal with the issue at hand.
But what if it is something you can’t see? What if termites are eating away at the structure of your home literally bite by bite, albeit small ones. On top of that, they are hidden from your view, secretly bringing destruction to the same home. A gradual day by day erosion to the structure of your life (your home) and you don’t even know it. Until, one day, one side of your house collapses rendering your home uninhabitable. Equally destructive as the fire, but hidden from your view.
How about the physical bodies we inhabit? They too are subject to similar scenarios. Perhaps we are jolted into an appreciation of our life through a sudden accident which takes us to edge of death’s door, but remarkably we are saved and fully recover. In these instances, the intensity of the event often creates a major awakening in the survivor and they have a newfound appreciation for life itself and the body they have been gifted. Contrast this with the slow and gradual deterioration that can occur to the human body through a small, but continuous neglect we inflict upon it. This can take on many forms and shapes but I am sure you as the reader, can fill in the blanks here as to how this might occur; lack of sleep, dietary issues, no physical activity etc.
The message in all of this being that it is not the dramatic that I believe we should fear, but rather the subtle, hidden manner in which, like the metaphoric frog, we can boil and not even know it. Fresh out of college, I had boss who had a million sayings he shared frequently with his employees. One of those was “its not what you know that can hurt you, its what you don’t know!” The shamanic wisdom I believe can help in this regard is “work daily on personal awareness”.
When we are tuned-in to our highest frequency, we are less likely to miss the subtleties, but rather find ourselves intuitively knowing when there is something “not right”. We have an internal GPS just waiting for us to activate it. My wish for us all is that we do. This, of course, is no guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong or awry in life, but I do believe it can help us steer clear of a myriad of destructive things we often encounter while on this earthly journey.
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