\ lessons learnt

The man at the podium delivers one of the oldest lessons from our childhood and as the audience applauds I realize why I do not belong. A co-worker notices my hands firmly unmoved from the table. "Something you don't agree with?" Eyes roll all around. I never agree, am stunned when others do. I want to say to them, no, that's not true, it's mythology. It's not even good mythology. I will tell my son when he comes home from school, answer his question, "Do you know that if you drop a frog in boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put a frog in cold water and gradually heat it to boiling, it will stay there and die?"

Our slippery slope. "No, I do not know this. I think you have it backwards."

"But if you drop a frog in boiling water, you don't think it will jump out?"

"If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will die. It will stretch out its arms and legs in a final act of suffering and surprise, and it will stay there until you remove it like a lobster."

"But if you put it in cold water and gradually heat-"

Imagine you are taken from your home, locked into a room with no exit. There are people as well as animals who have not lifted a hand in defense when the final moment came even as it was spotted miles away. Instead I might say, "Put the frog in a pot next to a pond, next to his home, give him a reason to jump, a place to go. When you begin to heat the water, he will not stay. We've done this, you know. What captured animal has ever remained calmly in our possession, except those we killed or tamed?"

"He's not talking about frogs. He's talking about people." I might say. Yes, this is what I'll say.

On the first day you meet someone, you might overwhelm them with all the degrees of your life til now, and it will have everything to do with the sudden heat, but some of them will not run away. Or you might offer a bit of your shoulder and only warm to them over days and years, and in spite of the cold, some will choose to stay. Once, I turned up the heat slowly, and allowed it to cool, what was the frog supposed to do? I went cold then hot then tepid, left home and worried that the oven was on, returned to a room full of loved ones. Sometimes I jump from the water, lick my wounds, jump right back into the very same pot.

Sometimes I am reluctant to leave, even when the cold reminds me of the ever steepening angle of autumn's sun, that we will not return to the warmth to which we were accustomed, nor to the heat that loosened us from our skin, caused our blood to sing in perfect pitch, until we have slowed, the water still, in the distance you can see that those who have left are no longer running, are far enough to walk, lesson plans on the horizon, indistinguishable as mythology.