One never puts thought while forwarding junk mail to friends and acquaintances - it happens by habit.

Yesterday, I sent this to Ibel, my office colleague-

As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away.

They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

True …Right???

And her reply was:

Good one. But there is something else that I learnt from this passage.

Just a thought went through my mind, is training a little child when he / she is young. When you bond the child in the right values in their childhood, they will find it difficult to deviate or break from it when they are old enough (though they can break it). It makes it so much important for parents to be able to tie them to the right values when they are very young. Like the older elephants, they are conditioned to believe that they cannot break it very easily.

I am thinking on a different line than the moral of the passage given below. Thanks for the mail. It was nice to read it.

No wonder we (Indians in particular) judge a person by the family he/she comes from. It may be possible to change some behaviors in adult life, but the values inculcated during childhood prevail.

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