“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
I just finished reading "There is Nothing Wrong With You". In the book, the idea of being present is explored. What does being 'present' mean? To me it means being here, now, sitting with whatever is going on in your personal universe. What do you see NOW? What do you feel NOW? What do you hear NOW?
This is in contrast to what we usually do in our minds -- we often reside in our imaginations, thinking about the past and how we SHOULD have acted, or thinking about what we need to DO next in order to change ourselves or our world to conform to how it SHOULD be.
The book explores the concept that as children, we are educated to believe that that there is something wrong with us. For example, if we laugh like a hyena at something ridiculous, maybe our parents told us to stop being silly. Or perhaps we cried when we fell, and our siblings told us to stop being a baby. Whatever happens in our past, it leaves many people questioning themselves and their own worth.
We find that perhaps we are a gazelle at heart, but the world tells us we 'have to' be strong and fight like the lion. Or perhaps we are a lion, and the world tells us that we must be meek and unobtrusive like a sheep or a gazelle.
Either way, we are often told (directly or indirectly) that who we are is wrong.
But the point of the book and in my own personal discovery is: does any of it matter? You are who you are. I am who I am. That will never change.
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