The Ends & The Outsides
Do you know how gazelles travel? Have you heard?
They travel with the weakest on the ends and the outsides of the group. The weakest are on the ends and the outsides.
They travel this way so that if lions come, the weakest will block the stronger, the more important. If lions come, the weakest will be eaten first.
This seems sad, but makes some sense too. This is how the strongest survive. This is how the species survives.
This is how many humans try to survive too. We put the weakest on the ends and the outsides. We try not to get eaten first.
....and thus we deceive each other. We deceive each other so that the group will see us as valuable, more important. We deceive each other so that we will not be humiliated by what we don't know and so that we will seem like we know the most and so that nobody else will really know, will really know us. We deceive each other because we are afraid of being eaten first, but unlike gazelles, we should know better. Humans should know.
We should know that the weakest are not always weak. Sometimes they just don't know and they belong not on the ends and the outsides, but in the middle where we can protect them and teach them and help them to grow and where we can learn from them too. We can learn when we teach.
This is what sets us apart from other living things: our capacity for compassion and community and care and connection, our understanding that sometimes we know and sometimes we don't and we are not invaluable when we don't.
It's OK not to know, not to have all the answers all the time, and it's OK to ask for help. It's OK to seek the knowers because every time you do you are given beautiful opportunities for growth and humility and grace.
Growth. Humility. Grace.
If we cannot though, if we cannot let the group see us as vulnerable and unsure, then we will always be so. We will always be vulnerable and unsure. If we cannot let the group see us, then we will always feel like those gazelles, the weakest ones.
The ones on the ends and the outsides.
