The chained elephant

 

"When I was a kid I loved circuses, and what I liked most about circuses was animals. I, too, like others, then I found out, the elephant was in my eye.

During the role, the huge beast displayed its enormous weight, size, and strength... but after his performance and until a while before returning to the stage, the elephant was rested only by a chain that imprisoned one of his paws to a small stake nailed to the ground. However, the stake was only a tiny piece of wood barely buried a few inches in the ground.

And while the chain was thick and powerful, it seemed obvious to me that this animal capable of plucking a rennet tree with its own strength could easily rip the stake off and run away. The mystery is obvious: What maintains it then? Why don't you run away?

When I was five or six years old, I still trusted the wisdom of the greats. Then I asked a teacher, a father or some guy about the mystery of the elephant. Some of them explained that the elephant doesn't escape because he was trained. So I asked the obvious question... If he's trained, why are they chaining him? I don't remember receiving any coherent response.

Eventually I forgot the mystery of the elephant and the stake... and I only remembered it when I met others who had also asked themselves the same question. A few years ago I discovered that luckily for me someone had been wise enough to find the answer: the circus elephant does not escape because he has been attached to a similar stake since he was very, very small. I closed my eyes and imagined the little newborn attached to the stake. I'm sure at that moment the elephant pushed, pulled, sweated, trying to let go. And despite all his effort, he couldn't.

The stake was certainly too strong for him. He would swear that he slept exhausted, and that the next day he tried again, and also the other and the one who followed him. Until one day, a terrible day for its history, the animal accepted its helplessness and resigned himself to its fate. This huge and powerful elephant, which we see in the circus, does not escape because he believes - poor - that he cannot. He has a record and recollection of his helplessness, of that helplessness he felt shortly after he was born. And the worst part is that that record has never been seriously questioned again. Never... Never... tried to test his strength again..."

One of The Most Well Known Tales of Jorge Bucay; this narrative tells us how our previous memories and experiences can give us knowledge, but also generate stagnations and blockages that prevent us and that can sabotage us even when their original cause is no longer present. The storytelling pushes us to keep trying to test ourselves even though what we have experienced may have made us believe that we cannot do it.

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