On Elephants
My daughter is 2 years old and very fond of elephants.
Her piccolo fante is a tiny grey elephant that has been a favourite in her stable of fluffy friends and is often with her. This must be why my attention is so tuned into elephants around me, not just at home on the floor. I came across a number of elephant idioms and stories over the past two weeks and, I must admit, they brought so much pachydermal insight that I decided to share and celebrate them all as prompts for reflection.
The elephant in the room
The idiom describes a situation in which something humongous, obvious and clear in front of our eyes is ignored and overlooked. It is right there, in its whole grandiose presence, but everyone behaves as if it wasn’t because acknowledging it and talking about it would be embarrassing, controversial or dangerous. Like we all have skeletons in our closets, we all walk among elephants in our everyday life.
What elephant have you met today?
What did you do about it?
What would you have to say about it?
The blind men and the elephant
This story tells of a group of blind men who come across an elephant for the first time. Each of them starts feeling a part of the giant animal and tells the others what it feels like to them. For the one feeling the trunk the elephant is like a snake, the one feeling the ear says it’s a big fan, the one at the leg describes it as a tree, and the one feeling the tail as a rope. Bottom line: nobody is right, and everybody is right. The story is used to encourage a reflection on the fallacy of our subjective experiences, but also on the importance of integrating different perspectives to make sense of the whole.
When do you find yourself most open to listening and accepting other people’s perspectives?
And when are you stiffening up and more rigid about defending your truth?
What do you do when you are wrong or don’t know something?
The memory of an elephant
In “The rabbit listened” by Cori Doerrfeld, a beautiful children’s book we read often at home, an elephant comes to save the day saying “I can fix this. We just have to remember EXACTLY how things were”. When I read it, it always makes me think that, while it is true that our past holds resources and solutions we can draw from, it can also be a limitation to our awareness of the present, possibilities for the future, and natural creativity and resourcefulness.
What frames and schemes of the past are you still applying but are not serving you in the present?
What is it time to let go of?
What is holding you back from experimenting?
Eat an elephant one bite at the time
Ever set off to do something and then stopped, feeling overwhelmed just at the thought of tackling something so big? Me, often. Some tasks and activities feel daunting because of their complexity, scale o requirements. It feels like standing at the bottom of Everest and looking up at the top, incredibly far away. It is then that a bit of planning and critical thinking come in handy: what resources do I need, what can I realistically do, when do I want to achieve the end goal, and who can help me? This, and a shift from wanting it all now, to embracing that also the journey itself will be worth the effort.
Which smaller and more manageable parts is the elephant made of?
How are you going to keep track of your progress?
What are you learning as you go and what will help you finish off the elephant?
Here was some food for thought, to be taken one elephant at a time.
They are such impressive creatures, both in stories and reality, and perhaps not because of their size, but for their quiet, slow and powerful presence.
What other elephant sayings, idioms, and stories do you know? Please get in touch, I would be happy to meet new elephants.
Written by: Maddalena Fumagalli, Practitioner Coach & Mental Health First Aider
Photo Credit: Unsplash
