Jonathon Flaum describes a principle of life through a story he recalls from his younger years. Flaum's rhetoric is blurring and complicated but ironically the concept he tries to outline is very simple; to grow we must explore. Flaum uses the analogy of the futile escape attempts of a caged tiger. He says the tiger cannot escape because the cage is a part of the tiger and he brings it with him wherever he goes.
In my own interpretation of Flaum's anecdote I found that the tiger is trapped simply because captivity is all it knows. Flaum says we must transcend our cage to have ‘new life’ or grow. Take any challenge like opening a door, talking to your love for the first time, walking on two feet; any of these tasks challenge us to get out of our comfort zones (cages) and learn something new without any assurance of safety like the feeling of failure if you can’t open a door, the possibly getting crushed by your infatuation, or tripping over your feet.
You will learn over the rest of this post that I possess a very healthy self-esteem. I actually created my own favorite quote, “Don’t Stop”. I could almost say that the song “Don’t Stop” by Foster the People inspired my quote because that is the source of the words, but the true essence of them is missing.
These two words speak to me because they are my trigger and because this trigger is in the optimal position to be pulled daily. I engineered the quote to have both words capitalized and for it to be short because it implies both importance and urgency. The quote is my trigger because I respond to self-motivation. I believe that to succeed one must have the drive to excel and not only do I have it, I am proud of it. The optimal position I mentioned earlier is my computer. The quote is programmed to appear on my screen if I switch between programs for a long period of time, which is something I do when I am bored. Once that quote pops up on my screen the fire inside me begins to burn red hot and I remember that to succeed one must have the drive to excel. This quote has been my panacea for the last year and has been the catalyst for some of my most acclaimed achievements.
We know that Flaum believes that to break free of our cage we must venture into the unknown. My favorite quote is the domino that tips the venturing into motion. Because of my self-motivation and the use of my quote to catalyze my actions I am consistently digging out of more and more cages. I think that Flaum would be proud of my ability to dive into the unknown and impressed with the experience I have with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment