Last year I made a post about the Cherokee proverb of the two wolves. This post is a new breakdown of this proverb.
Just as a recap, here is the proverb itself:
A young boy goes up to one of his elders and asks the elder to tell him about fear and the elder replies “there is a fight between two wolves going on inside of you, one is fear and the other is love. The love-wolf represents joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
“And the fear-wolf represents what?” Replies the boy
“The fear-wolf represents anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
“And which wolf wins?” replies the boy
“The one that you feed” replies the elder.
Now, this seems like a very clear message which shouldn’t be hard to follow. But the truth is that it’s a tough fight – fear is deeply ingrained into us, it’s what drove our furthest ancestors to survive.
For example, the fear of starvation made them hunt, the fear of scarcity made them gather, and the fear of large wild animals made them run a mile and hide under a rock.
And the truth is that sometimes it still helps us to survive:
For example, a heroin addict quits heroin because they fear dying.
An overweight person goes on a diet and exercises because they fear diabetes and heart disease etc.
So healthy fears exist. It’s when they manifest elsewhere that they become a problem. You will find fear being the root cause of all negative human behaviour:
Jealousy – fear of not being enough
Greed – fear of not having enough (or not appearing as though you have enough)
Dishonesty – fear of the truth
Hate – fear of forgiveness
Etc
And as with fear but at the other end of the spectrum, love:
Charity – the love of giving
Kindness – the love of thoughtfulnesss
Hope – the love of optimism
Courage – the love of bravery
Etc
So the key to life really is to make decisions out of love as often as you can because if all of your decisions come from a place of love, love only brings more love – and when things go wrong, you can never blame yourself – you made your decisions out of love.
But naturally, sometimes, you will respond with fear. Because sometimes fear is what keeps us alive.
The hardest part though, is making sure that when things do go wrong – and they will – you still respond try to those things with love… this is when you will be really tested.
