Hold on, are we being led into a pig pen?
Hello fellow Protagonists,
Last week I collected a bundle of second hand books on the cheap. These were mainly around leadership and coaching though one book was slightly different. Sitting alone, about half the size of the other books was the adequately named The little book of thinking big by Richard Newton.
I have never heard of Richard Newton before. Sometimes there is a reason for this, that the book is shit and nobody has mentioned it. Other times there are simply so many books in the world and new releases each year that many go under the radar and become lost in the nether.
There is a certain lure from books in the nether, uncovered gems are there for the mental mining.
In this book I found just that!
Within its 176 pages, there is a story about the wild pigs of the Okefenokee swamp that got me a pondering.
Story time folks!
The pigs of the Okefenokee swamp were these dangerous, nasty ass kind of creatures to hunt and nobody dared to search for these monsters for fear of losing life and limb, or even worse reputation.
A fresh faced hunter stumbled into town and claimed that he was going to capture all of these beasts and make a fortune. The other hunters told him he was stupid for doing so and was risking his life. Regardless, the hunter bought a sack of corn and wandered into the forest.
Months had passed and the other hunters had thought this guy had either quit or had been killed, until eventually the hunter returned and asked for help from the locals to take hundreds of swamp pigs to the market for sale.
It turns out that the hunter had been using the corn to get the swamp pigs used to taking and following easy food that they were eventually trained and led into a pen, after months of repeating this process and once all the pigs had moved into the pen the pen gate was locked and these savage beasts were all ready for market.
Injury free with additional bragging rites and a bad time to be a swamp pig.
So what is the moral of this story? I am not too certain but what I can tell you is that it left a strange taste in my mouth.
Some may take the lesson from the hunter, that even savage beasts can be manipulated with the right rewards. Others may take the lesson from the other hunters who had given up and even influenced new hunters to not bother achieving a goal. That thinking outside of the box is a key to success. Some may hate the story because of the poor piggies!
Me, I am going to take my lessons from the Okefenokee pigs!
These pigs were mean gladiators and still ended up being led to the pen just by making them think about instant and easy gratification over the potential risks.
They had no idea what was going on.
Stories mean different things to each of us, my mind jumped straight to:
We are the Okefenokee pigs
The corn is the instant easy gratification of material things we don't really want to impress people we don't care about, with money we don't have
The pen is the nasty realisation when our freedom has been jeopardized, the pen gate has been shut and we are forced to continue to act, not out of choice but out of created necessity. Or we are about to become brisket!
And the hunters, they are masters of marketing, making those sweet corn treats seem so appealing, effortless and essential.
A bit extreme from a story about pigs. Heavy I know but when a story leaves a weird taste in my mouth, a corn-like taste some may say, it is going to be heavy.
Maybe it is a lesson that if something is too easy and we are all biting, we need to stop and think about what this corn is leading us towards? Once we are in the pen it can be almost impossible to escape.
Some things are just meant to be difficult in order to be rewarding.
I have finished this book and will be selling it on, I highly encourage people to do this as it essentially turns the whole world into a free library.
What did you take as the moral of this story?
Now eat your corn like a good swamp pig.
GLHF (Good Luck Have Fun)
Warrick
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