How are the labels you’ve given yourself and others hindering or helping? After ‘meaning to’ for several years I finally walked down the street to the annual Redcliffe Show.
‘Larry’ and ‘Naked’
I’ve always loved country shows, but had let my partner’s disinterest and other options get in my way. Perhaps you can relate to that? Anyway, it was time so off I went and found myself at the pig race – piglets actually, very cute, and in their sequined racing colours. Except ‘Naked’ the ‘runt’ who was perhaps too small for the coats. They looked happy and healthy and seemed to enjoy the stimulation of the obstacle course challenge they’d been trained to do – the ‘race’, and finding the ‘finishing line’, a hidden bowl of food. Beautifully trained they all rushed to the starting box when the racing music trumpeted out.
‘Naked’ the ‘runt’ was particularly active before the race, checking out what was where, including all the coloured bowls, one of which would end up being the ‘finishing line’. He was very agile, and racing he slipped through on the inside every corner until he was in the lead. He was first to find the right bowl, on top of a bale of hay, but ‘Larry’ my winning pig got his snout in first with a forceful shoulder shove.
How different would it have been if ‘Naked’ was a human? If he knew he wasn’t big enough to be dressed like the others and that made him different, if he knew he had a humiliating name and was always referred to as the runt of the litter, the left over bit, the after-thought, not quite as good a quality or desirable as the others? What if he’d been excused from trying because he was smaller and ‘needed protecting’? Or prevented from competing because ‘obviously’ he wasn’t big enough to complete successfully with the others his age? What if he believed in the labels others gave him, and thought that’s who he really is? I wonder. And would ‘Larry’ have been booed as a bully or cheered for winning at all costs? Hmmm.
Fortunately Naked is a pig, a smart one, and blissfully unaware of others’ limitations for him. Next race he was first by a clear snout to that same bowl, which unfortunately was no longer the ‘finishing line’. He realised before the other piglets and he was off like a shot to check out the other bowls. No self-limitations there.
Leave a Reply