An old Indian Guru once told me, when words and their meanings were not important to me, to remember a particular statement he had made, even if I remembered nothing from all of his flowing words of the afternoon.  It is easy to remember, as I can still repeat verbatim in all accuracy, even now, twenty years later.

“Speak like mice and learn like elephants.”  The meaning is also obvious enough.  The advantage of mice is their ability to be quick and quite piercingly loud, while elephants have their bulk in muscle which keeps them from falling over.  Lucky for us, elephants tend not to be violent, otherwise, we’d all be mashed potatoes.

At the time this was said to me, I was only concentrating on school and trying to get high enough marks to be allowed into the next grade.  And, I can tell you, unfortunately, I did not get into the next grade.  But that actually is a different story than this one.  I saw the meaning to be meant for those who were failing (or not making the grade), since it was instructional.  I am always in habit, because I have always made the grade, in one way or the other.  So, I saw all the others sitting around me in the auditorium to be the intended recipients of the free advice on making the grade.

The Indian Guru, actually explained in great detail.  It is known that elephants eat a tonne of food and water every week.  They are social and travel and live in packs.  They rear their young in families, within the larger pack that they live and travel with.  They pass their wisdom down to their young through experience and living.  Elephants are never on the endangered species list, and are not in danger of being extinct.

Well, what of mice?  They are rodents.  Very dirty rodents who live in filth and dirt and eat scraps of food that have dropped from mouths and plates.  They carry disease that is easily passed from mouse to mouse to other rodents, and if they are in your house, they will pass life endangering diseases like the Hanta Virus on to the human beings in the house.  They have their offspring in litters of up to six at once.  Only the quickness of a cat can catch the speedy mice, as they are able to hunt them out of their holes.

So, why should we try to speak like mice?  What redeeming quality would we be displaying if and when we speak like mice?  They live and act like they are in wartime situations, fighting for scarce food and only doing, eating, and squeaking for self-perseverance.  They know how to stay alive.  By using the sparse food supply and their ability to find life like lawyers are able to find life in a death sentence, they stay alive… and for us, we win the argument.  We are able to defend those values, and those things, that are important to us.  We will have our pack of elephants to travel with, thanks to our ability to be there.

So, what did I think and do with this Indian Guru’s words of wisdom that I did not consider or care about more than twenty years ago?  I thought his wisdom was out of date, from too long ago.  None of the situations that he spoke about actually applied to me at any of the times that I thought of myself in.  And, thus, my evaluation of his talk:  Only those who were not making the grade to get into the next class needed it.

Now, I am a little more circumspect.  Words have more meaning than just the meaning listed in the dictionary.  I surprised myself just the other day.  I did a college students’ favorite get-drunk-pastime:  I listed all the similar words I knew existed for “Molestation.”  Then, I looked up the dictionary definition.  None of the words were synonyms and none of the words were actually accurate of my understanding of the situation of “Molestation.”  How different this world is from that world I was in when I had access to great talks given by experts and Gurus of all kinds!  I am in wonder how I was actually able to learn anything at all!

There was a time when I considered the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language my bible.  It was the only way through which I could understand the world, and any of the articles and books that I was reading.  Now, if I were to rely on this staid and steadfast bible, I would become very lost as to what people are talking about.  I remember wisdom and I remember blessings, and I remember stories.  None of these things relies on the dictionary.  they all rely on life.  So, as the weather gets warmer, and you are looking for something to do…  Go wild one day this summer… Sit by the dock and get drunk for the afternoon and see how many words you can think of that have the same meaning!