Lessons animals teach us 2

Learning to shy away from danger

Human beings have supreme thinking capabilities as compared to animals. Unfortunately, that does not make us intelligent in all aspects of our being. There are some areas were we lag behind, areas which animals perform with great expertise and efficiency. If we study these animal abilities and borrow their skills, we become more intelligent, more supportive to each other, more tolerant and more conscious of our environment. 

In this newsletter we focus on Snakes. Many people are afraid of snakes. There are a lot of myths about this legless reptile and as a result, many people associate it with evil. It’s true to say that many of us have heard of stories of witches using snakes in their witchcraft acts. Even in the bible, the animal is portrayed as the devil alluring Adam and Eve into sin. Most people would not think of anything positive coming from a snake and that is a wrong perception. Snakes have a lot of lessons for us human beings, especially young people. One of the lessons is Avoiding Danger.
Although the animal is armed with unique skills of attacking, fangs, flexibility and venom, its first option when confronted by an intruder is to shy away and find another possible route. A snake tries as much as possible to avoid getting into any dangerous situation. It does this out of respect for itself. It does not shy away because it can not fight, no. It values its life.

We, as young people, we must embrace this perspective to life. We must learn to appreciate and value ourselves so much that we are able to shy away from getting into dangerous situations. Not because we don’t know how to maneuver ourselves in those situations, but because we understand how valuable and precious we are. There are many dangerous situations that come into our lives, opportunities for fornication, corruption, drug abuse, obscene exposure and in general unproductive behaviours. These are intruders and they are flagged highly dangerous. The wisdom of the snakes encourages us to shy away and avoid such behaviours and dangerous situations.

Avoiding certain behaviors is sometimes wrongly perceived as an inferiority behavior. How many people have you heard saying, “I did not want to do it but I did it anyway because I did not want to look like I was not man enough”. Many young people have gotten into trouble because they want to prove that they can stand up to the challenge. Some have problems with Marijuana today because they could not simply shy away. The snake loses nothing by avoiding confrontations. It retains its venom and preserves its fangs. So we must realize the same fact, that we lose nothing and we retain our chastity.

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