Elephants and Fences

First let me begin by saying how much I truly love elephants. My late grandfather collected elephants -- brass, china, wood, and even a few plastic ones he received from us when we were just children. From a young age when I saw an elephant I saw my grandfather. The memories are warm and personal.

Tonight I learned a bit more about elephants -- specifically how they go about making change in their environs. I am told that when confronted by a fence elephants will rarely charge the fence, but rather lean on it until it collapses. This process might take days, but it is the prefered method of breaking down barriers between one's elephant self and what one wants. Judging from the elephants I have seen, the pressure of holding up under an elephant must be immense and I can understand why the fences collapse. It is all quite simple when it is simply engineering.
Where I start to worry is when I look closer at the elephant bearing down on the fence.

The force of an elephant looks very much like oppression to me. The sheer strength and weight of the elephant is no match for most fences I can imagine. Words like stubborn and bullying come to mind. It is not long before I begin to see the elephant as the agressive oppressor and the fence as the submissive opressed. It is not difficult to see elephants as oppressors, especially when they are about the work of tumbling walls destroying the fences constructed to protect me.

As much as I love elephants. I never thought I wanted to be one. And more than that, I've never wanted to be an oppressor.

But then I remembered that the fence was built my someone else, for the sole purpose of holding back, containing, and controling the elephant. The oppressor in absentia.

And there I am in my mind, standing beside the elephant.

Pushing hard.