The elephant stops trying

A boy was visiting the zoo with his mother. They came across an elephant tied to a rope, surrounde dby a low wooden fence. The little boy was amazed that an animal so huge could be so tame.

"Why doesn't the elephant escape? " He asked the elephant's caretaker.

"He's so big and strong that all he needs to do is swing his trunk and he will be free! Look at the fence and rope. They will never be able to stop him!"

The Caretaker told them that 20 years ago, this elephant arrived at the zoo as a baby.
At first, it would try all ways to escape. It would charge against the fence, or try to break the rope. Being only a baby, the elephant was not able to break free. It continued his struggle for sometime without success. Eventually, it stopped trying to escape and accepted its condition as just fate.

"Today, " the caretaker said ," though the baby elephant has grown into a big adult elephant, he has never once tried to escape again. In his own eyes, he is still the baby elephant he used to be."

We may laugh at this story of the elephant that was once a baby. But are there times when we think like that too?

When we started work, we are taught to do things in a certain way. Perhaps today we are still doing it the same way, or we are asking the young ones to keep doing it that way. But is that way the best way?

Today we have more experience, more opportunities to propose and try out new ideas. But are we still behaving like the elephant in some ways? have we given up trying? Have we stopped wondering why we cannot do things better by doing them in a different way?

Let us not be like the elephant that did not realise it has grown up. It has greater strength. It has greater ability. But it has given up thinking. It has given up trying.

Often the problem is not that we do not try. The problem is that we do not try again!