In Defense Of The Wolf

Last night I read the age old story The Boy Who Cried Wolf to my 4 year old. He was mostly asleep by the end of the story but I was enjoying watching how beautiful he is as he goes to sleep and, at the same time lost in thought about the story. You might wonder how someone could be lost in thought over such a simple story but it's a gift I posses to over-think things, sometimes one that doesn't work in my favor, to look at many angles at once or, to at least consider them eventually. As I read through the story for what seemed like the 50th time, this was one that I considered eventually.

After telling this story to 3 kids over the years I started considering the wolf in this story, and even the child. The story is written to teach a lesson about lying and credibility, one that actually is important to us for one of our children that struggles in the area of telling big fish stories. As with all stories that are written myopically, they leave the whole of reality out in the effort to prove a particular point. Point in case here, lying will eventually cause your credibility to fall.

In the case of the boy in the story, the point here was he had no credibility in the end for telling a particular lie so many times. The point of this age old story is to teach that lying is bad because no one believed him anymore. As I thought about this point though, it wasn't completely true as someone did trust him enough to let him continue watching the sheep. He had just lost credibility in the area of lying about the wolf however he obviously could be credible to watch the innocent sheep and keep them safe unless the owner(s) were just trying to get him out of town at the expense of a few sheep.

This idea about overgeneralizing stood out to me because it is very typical human behavior for most of us, we tend to generalize our thoughts about a person, an idea or even an event instead of just looking at at the grey areas in between the black and white, or just considering that we may have just a fragment of information about the subject in question. How many times I have looked at someone differently after hearing someone's observation or critique, almost looking for evidence that this is true. It could be something as small as someone telling you "they are very greedy," all of a sudden you are looking for evidence of greed in that persons life. Once you think you see something that aligns with what you heard, say that person asks you to grab lunch or you notice a particular behavior that might look greedy, now you have all the evidence you need to confirm "yes, this person is greedy", and "yep they were right, she certainly is greedy." Now the whole of that person is greedy and everything they do is motivated by greed somehow. The mind now filters that person as a greedy person, and you begin to see them through this filter, almost everything they do can seem like it's motivated by greed. Even when they appear to do something that looks giving or unselfish we may suspect something else as even their motivations are scrutinized.

One of the best stories I have ever read about this particular process, one that I try to remember often to practice the idea of being present, is the story about a man loosing a hammer. It goes something like this.

A boy liked to come over to his neighbors house often to visit. The two were friends and the older man liked the boy. One day the man was out at his garage making repairs to his gutter with his shiny new hammer. He became thirsty and went in for a drink, when he came back out he found his hammer was gone. The man looked across the fence and there was the boy next door out playing in his yard. The man went to get another hammer but made keen note of the fact that the boy didn't come over all afternoon. As a matter of fact, he didn't even look the old mans way that day.

The old man became very disappointed as he noticed the boy did not come over the next 2 days to visit. This was obviously guilty behavior and the old man became sure the boy stole his hammer. On the third day the boy did come over and the man observed that he wasn't saying as much as usual, and seemed to be behaving erratically. He even saw the boy avoiding eye contact.

A few days later, the man was out at his garage on a windy day and noticed that there was something metallic shining through the leaves. He walked over and found that the hammer was exactly where he had put it a few days ago, on the ground, but covered up by the leaves of fall which he had not raked up yet.

Notice how the mans filter was turned on the moment he allowed the idea that the boy could be guilty penetrate his thoughts. Notice how he was looking for evidence to support that judgment every time he looked at the boy after that. The old adage, "we see what we seek" comes to mind here. This story makes me think that's it's important to ask myself "what am I seeking?" What is it we are looking for in others, based on preconceived notions? What is it I am looking for in myself, to prove things others have said about me, or even generalizations I have pronounced on myself?

Looking back at the boy in the Boy Who Cried Wolf story, I see a boy who could have been pronounced untrustworthy by many in the town, however there was at least one farmer who trusted him to take his sheep. In other words he wasn't a bad boy necessary even though many in the town may have considered him untrustworthy altogether.

How about our antagonist in the story - the dreaded wolf? Wolves throughout history have been portrayed as big, bad, ugly, mean and yes, sly. Why villainize the wolf? These ideas reach far back into the very survival instinct of man, the predator trying to steal what is innocent. What is more innocent and helpless as a sheep? These images are supported by age old stories from ancient parables, stories and even biblical text. We could very easily just say "wolves are bad and deserve our judgment" which would certainly be reinforced by enough stories to make you feel justified but isn't that what we do with entire cultures or races of people?

Isn't the wolf just trying to sustain it's life? The wolf is an animal that's very nature requires it to hunt to live; It must find, track down and kill to sustain life. Are we so different? Sure we go to the grocery store to find our packaged meat in a modern day system that removes us very far from the idea that something had to die for you to live. The wolf doesn't have this same process to sustain it's life so he must hunt. Some studies have recently shown that just giving food to animals who have been hunting their food down for thousands of years creates anxiety and a loss of motivation. Many zoo's have taken action on this information and begun to put food out in containers that lions have to tear open in order to eat. Animals that could be observed sitting listlessly, laying around in groups before, can now be seen playfully ripping into containers filled with hay and meat with a renewed vigor.

So what's the point of all this? I have none. Some ideas may be that many stories and parables are designed to make a point, but by making one point we are automatically denying someone's reality or experience. Maybe another idea is that you while your trying to tell a story about someone, something or some idea, you may be narrowly trying to prove some point or value you have while objectifying certain ideas or people in the process. Sounds like something to consider anyway. Mostly I just thought the wolf got a bad rap for just being a wolf.

Something else the story made me think of is the observation that as I get older I have less of a desire to make a point. When I was younger my whole existence screamed to make a point, and oddly enough most of them where wrong even though I would have bet my very life, and yours, on the notion that I was as right as rain. As I get older I spend much of my time trying to unlearn all that I thought was so solid and along the way have less a desire to make a point.