The Chain

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

We take a baby elephant and tie it to the trunk of a sturdy tree with a heavy chain.
The baby elephant doesn't have the submission in his blood. He is a wild free beast, not a domesticated servant.

He tries to get free.
He tugs at the chain with all his might but the chain is heavy and the tree too strong to unroot.

The baby elephant grows up chained to the trunk of a tree.
After failing to free itself, again and again, he gives up his freedom.
He stops tugging at the chain. He believes that his situation is inescapable.

After years the baby elephant has grown big and strong.
The elephant handler uses him to lift up and carry heavy trees.
The elephant could easily escape his master and run in the jungle to freedom, but he doesn't.

After the work is done the master takes the elephant back to the village.
He ties a chain around the elephant's leg and the elephant stays there obedient.
In its mind, the elephant is still tied to a big tree with a heavy chain.

What holds the elephant from his freedom is not the flimsy chain tied around its ankle but the belief in his head that he cannot escape. The chain is just a clever make-believe, a trick of the master.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

I've seen the elephant handlers logging the rainforest for precious wood.
They are poor people, uneducated people, doing what they are taught to do by their masters.
They have no idea of the impact they have on the lives of the elephants they have enslaved, the rainforest they have decimated or the planet we all live on.

The people living on the threshold of poverty in misery and slavery have no idea that they are free.
Free to take control of their destiny, free to pursue a better life, free to build a better future, a better society.
They have been brought up wearing the heavy chains of social rules they masters have put around their ankles.
They don't see that like the elephants they ride they have the real power, not the masters that keep them in slavery.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever he doesn't even know.

It is easy for us as Westerners to see what's happening to our brothers and sisters in the poor regions of the world.
Thou, it is hard for us to see how we the Western culture has created this social injustice and build our wealth on the back of the exploited nations.

Who has the money to buy elephant ivory trinkets and decorate our lavish house with furniture made of exotic rare woods?
Well somebody does and that is not the elephant rider or the logger cutting down the rainforest.

Don't be too hasty to judge.
Yes, we are all just doing our jobs, doing what we are told.
We all have our ankles tied with flimsy social chains. We all obey our master handlers.
True some of us have better larger cages and get better food than the others but still, we wear the same mental chains.

Are you living the life you want and deserve to live?
Are you living in the place, the neighborhood, the state or country of your dreams?
Are you pursuing your dreams, working the job of your dreams doing what your inborn talent is?
Are your relationship, healthy and loving as you want them to be?
are you free to do and live as you please?

There is an unspoken feeling every time you try to escape your current situation. We all have been chained, domesticated, beat into submission by social rules and laws.
We are no better than the elephants we have subjugated.

How clever an animal the human being is.
So clever we don't even know.