“Abraham Lincoln once asked his secretary,
“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs will a horse have?”
“Five,” the secretary replied.
“No,” said the president, “the answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.””
We often look at words as “things”. And in a sense, they are just that – things that are invisible, but capable of “poking holes” in the walls of our trust, when someone says something that makes us hurt. The same applies to ourselves, whether we believe in things, which are true or false. The world is mental and beliefs are the most powerful means of creating the reality we live in. But the other part of the truth is that they are not. As in the story above, calling a horse’s tail a leg, does not make it a leg. This is the main reason positive thinking techniques fail in the long run. If we feel small and pathetic inside, if we try to be kind and understanding, and the truth of our emotional reaction is different, there is no way to change that, even if we repeat affirmations to ourselves a hundred times a day about how confident, kind and compassionate we are. Such a brutal distortion of the truth is far from mental health and has nothing to do with emotional intelligence. Therefore, it is good to trust in the power of thought to create the realities our heart longs for. But it’s also good to be aware of the other side of the coin – the escape from painful reality, dark emotions, inevitable limitations. Another way of saying this – from the fifth leg of the horse and the lie.
Kameliya
