Bridget McNulty

The Tale of the Sheep-Lion.

// August 7th, 2008 // Decisions, Inspiration, Life (and the living of it), Philosophy

It’s Friday, so I thought it might be time for a little storytelling session… So sit back, make yourself a cup of tea, and enjoy.

There once was a baby lion cub whose mother died. Orphaned, he was taken in by a flock of sheep who taught him how to eat grass and how to bleat, and how to move as one with the flock. They loved the baby lion, and he loved them, but there was a part of him that knew that he didn’t really fit in. One day, a fully grown lion came bounding over the hill and into the middle of the flock. The sheep all ran away in hysteria, but the young sheep-lion recognised the similarity of the lion to himself, and approached him. In time, the lion taught the lion cub what it meant to be a lion (although he never once ate sheep!)

Now obviously, I’ve paraphrased that (probably quite badly) – it’s from my practical philosophy course. But what it serves as is a bit of a parable. We take on the nature of those around us, because it’s what everyone does. But then one day a lion appears – either externally in the form of an event or the ending of a relationship or an illness etc – or internally, when we suddenly have a lightbulb moment. And in that moment, when we’re face to face with our ‘lion’ we’re reminded that we’re more than human. We see the truth of the situation.

We acquire certain traits to play the game of life, and they’re good and necessary. But they aren’t all that there is to us. We all have a number of different roles – daughter/son, mother/father, boyfriend/girlfriend, employee/employer, teacher/student, friend. We all have these roles, and we can play them beautifully, so long as we remember that they aren’t all there is to us. The layers that we coat ourselves in – which might seem permanent and substantial – get shattered when we’re exposed to the truth. Our world demands to be interpreted differently.

And that, I think, is something to be thought about…