LEST WE FORGET

The elephant was mistreated. The elephant was rescued. The elephant was sent back to Botswanna. Years later the man who mistreated the elephant visited Botswanna. The mean man went walking in the jungle. The mistreated elephant came out of the jungle and squished the bad man like a bug.

Another elephant was sick. The good man fed the elephant oranges. The elephant got well and was sent home to South Africa. Years later other nice men wanted to help the elephant who had gotten sick again. The elephant wouldn't come out of the jungle for his medicine. The nice men sent for the good man. He came. The good man went to the edge of the jungle and held up an orange. The sick elephant came out for his medicine. The elephant got better. The end.

The lesson from these two stories is too simple to make any more complicated. If elephants, in these basically true stories, don't forget rights and wrongs done to them years ago, how much more grudge-carrying, debt-owing can we humans be?

I don't believe it's just your extraordinary human memory that remembers the good and the bad done to you. Remembrance goes deeper. Sometimes when there is a lot of energy around a criticism or a praise, it seeps in every molecule of your being. That memory becomes part of who you are and fundamentally changes you. You shed indignities and dignities in the short term, but at some level you, like an elephant, never forget.

This primal and permanent memory requires you be very selective with what you choose to let in. The choice you have of what to remember, and how strongly to remember it, differentiates you from Dumbo. (And also that trunk thing.)


Lesson: Be careful what you choose to remember because you'll never forget it.