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“One BIG Lesson I Learned from Elephants”
A few years back, my husband and I went to Thailand for our honeymoon. We spent part of our time there volunteering at a sanctuary for elephants in the Chiang Mai area in Northern Thailand.
There is a lot to be said about that part of our trip. I remember playing cards under a small flashlight at night, but never for too long, as the light attracted the bugs, which made it challenging to pretend the big spiders and other critters crawling up outside the mosquito net weren’t really there. The track to the bathroom was muddy and the showers were cold. And most of the food had “Stinky Soy” in it, a local favorite that tastes pretty much like its name.
We helped around the kitchen, scrubbing and cutting tons of fruit for the elephants. We filled jute sacks with soil and carried rocks around in the warm rain of monsoon season to help prevent mud from sliding into the lower part of the river, which was where we walked every day alongside the elephants for their daily bath. Our job was to stand in the river with buckets and splash the elephants, which was fun for everyone involved. Well, except maybe for a terrified snake I once saw swimming nearby, trying to across the river as fast as he could to get as far away from the commotion as possible.
Elephants are awesome. They are highly intelligent and playful, curious and extremely sensitive.
We were in luck, and were there shortly after 2 baby elephants were born in the sanctuary. When one of these half-ton bowling goof-balls spontaneously starts running straight toward you, which they very often do when they see you standing out in an open field, it’s best to stand still until about one second before they hit you, and then calmly step aside. They just keep on running past you, full speed ahead.
We met wonderful people from all around the world, and shared stories while shoveling elephant dung, which doesn’t smell by the way, as they only digest less than 45% of what they eat. In fact, we learned that the fiber content in elephant droppings is so high that they make paper out of it. Looking back. I should have gotten some of that paper and written down the stories I heard while we were shoveling all that elephant dung together. There is never a dull moment when you hang out with elephants, it seems.
Each rescued elephant in the parade is assigned a “mahout,” who is the responsible for training and taking care of his/her assigned elephant. We quickly made friends with the mahouts, and very much enjoyed hearing their stories about their lives and the elephant they were paired with.
When our fellow volunteers went on guided tours to see the villages in the area, we preferred to stay behind and spend more time with the elephants. The sanctuary vet agreed to let us tag along and lend a hand when he went on his rounds, enabling us to learn even more about our fascinating, and surprisingly hairy, new friends.
Spending time with the parade and listening to the stories of the vet and the mahouts gradually taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten: The importance and joy of exploring and expressing the full range of who I am and what I really enjoy. You see, an elephant will very gently take a peanut from your hand with the tip of its trunk, which is shaped almost like two delicate fingers. It will then stand there for a minute, completely at ease, savoring that one peanut. Then, it will politely check to see if you happen to have another of those tasty treats and might be interested in sharing. When you aren’t bearing gifts, the elephants will still stand quietly and let you approach them and get to know them, always curious to see what tiny you is all about.
At the other end of an elephant’s impressive range of behavior is their undeniable strength. If and when they decide to use force, they can effortlessly throw you against a wall, breaking your body as if it were a twig or simply crushing you under their massive weight. Luckily, I’ve only heard stories about this behavior. As you can imagine, it doesn’t appear out of nowhere. An elephant who has been abused sometimes has trouble trusting us humans again. Until trust is restored, that particular elephant can be very dangerous.
Restoring the trust of a scared elephant takes time. It is done by devoted and experienced caretakers with endless patience and understanding of elephant behavior. Of course, we were only visitors in the sanctuary. But still, when you hear the stories, you start respecting elephants for everything they are, for the full scope of their capabilities, their individual personalities, and the many ways they express themselves.
This isn’t a call to the reader to explore their violent side, or to go and use physical strength to hurt others. Of course not. What I learned can be applied to different areas of who we are, which most of us are not fully aware of.
Are you gentle and tend to try and please others, but find it hard to be more assertive (not aggressive)? I was. Do you limit yourself to specific areas of “appropriate” hobbies, interest, or occupation? Do you regularly avoid trying out things that seem to contradict what others expect from you, or the way they see you due to your age, your gender or where you come from?.
How about what you read? Do you avoid certain genres altogether? When you are presented with an opportunity to taste some new food, or listen to a song you wouldn’t normally play yourself, do you tend to refuse, feeling you “just aren’t the sort of person” who listens to this type of music or eats that kind of food?
The list of missed opportunities for exploring the full array of what we might like and who we choose to be goes on and on. We all tend to stick to what we know. It’s just natural. We all avoid exploring new areas in life, and within ourselves, for fear of challenging the made-up story of who we are, a story we’ve been working so hard and for so long to hold on to and reenforce that we’ve built an identity out of it.
While sticking to what we know of as “who we are” is understandable and common, it is also limiting. And hey, as long as what we choose to try doesn’t hurt others, why let fear get the better of us?
Allowing myself to try out new things I might like has been very liberating. Take music, for example. When I’m choosing an album to listen to, or making myself a playlist, I have a pretty wide range of options, simply because I don’t feel like I have to play a role for the album or song to justify my choice. I can choose to listen to David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam or Nick Drake, or play a record of country music by one of my favorite country musicians, such as Dierks Bentley or Kacey Musgraves. I can listen to Bell & Sebastian or Snow Patrol, or dEUS (a very good Belgian rock band), or I can decide to listen to Glenn Gould playing the “Goldberg Variations” by Bach (the 1981 recording) or to Beethoven’s sonatas played by Daniel Barenboim.
I take my time with each new album, and then go back to it when I feel like it. Naturally, I don’t like everything, and there are musical genres I don’t usually listen to. However, if someone whose taste I trust recommends a song or an album I wouldn’t normally choose, I’ll try it and see if I like it. When it comes to music, I do my best not to limit myself. If it’s good – I’m in.
The same goes for books. If you say “Oh, I never read science fiction,” you’re likely to miss out on the fantastic “Ender’s Game” series by Orson Scott Card, or never get to know Connie Willis, and that would be a shame. There are business books that have been game changers in my life. I want to read anything by Malcom Gladwell or Dan Arieli, for example. And while, for some reason, classics can sometimes be intimidating, my life just wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t read Anne of the Green Gables (by L.M. Montgomery), Don Quixote (by Miguel de Cervantes), 1984 (by George Orwell), Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, or anything by Jane Austen.
If you shy away from everything non-fiction, you will never benefit from the wisdom of Jared Diamond or Simon Singh, for example, and this applies to a lot of well-written biographies and history books. That, to me, would be like willingly not seeing certain shades of colors when looking around at the world.
I love a good comedy (Life According to Lubka by Laurie Graham makes a delightful weekend read), and any novel by Barbara Kingsolver or Ian McEwan has a special place in my library. But I’m just as likely to pick my next book at the young adults section of a bookstore (don’t miss out on Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell). I strongly believe we are never too old to enjoy a good children’s book, and that it is never too late to start reading poetry.
Sure, there are things I don’t read (such as horror, for example), but there aren’t many genres I avoid all together. If I’m curious about a book, I add it to my list, and I’m not too worried about it affecting my image or contradicting with some identity I’ve built that limits me to reading some things and not others.
One more example of being comfortable with our full range of “self” is what we choose to spend our free time doing. For me, when it comes to hobbies or areas of interest, the same rule of thumb applies – it’s best to avoid placing boundaries around what you do for all the wrong reasons. Simply put, do what feels right to you.
As you’ve probably already guessed, I enjoy reading and listening to music. I also love hiking, baking bread (but not cakes), and I draw. I lift weights 5 days a week, and I love gardening. I sew and build things. I also plan to start taking martial art classes (not sure which one, yet – suggestions are welcome). I run. These are a few of the things I enjoy doing.
Our time is limited. The best way I can think of to get the most out of life is by spending as much time as possible doing things I really want to do, rather than trying to fit into some mold made by others - or worse, one that I made all by myself.
The range of what we can do and who we can be is as wide as we allow it to be. I’ve found this lesson I learned from elephants to be useful in most domains of my life. Elephants are gentle, sensitive, curious, and much more. They are incredibly cool just by being, and by fully expressing who they really are. By simply showing up, they have inspired me to strive to do the same, and I’ve been trying to do that ever since.
Thank you for reading this. I hope we all continually dare to discover the full scope of who we really are.
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