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05 March 2010 11:48
article thumbnai1. Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, & falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks. 2. Words sometimes serve as a smoke screen to obscure the truth, rather than...

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Saturday, 03 January 2009 13:20
Personally Speaking< Prev   Next >A New You For A New Year
By Abi F. May

I can't remember ever seeing a flea circus—the classic sideshow event in which fleas are the performers—but I came across a fascinating article about how the fleas are trained.

Fleas can jump extraordinarily high, relative to their tiny size. Training fleas involves putting them into a small box or jar. Without a lid, the fleas could easily jump out, so the flea trainer puts a lid in place and waits.

Inside the container, the fleas jump up in order to escape. They hit the lid and fall back down. Again and again, the fleas will jump, hit the lid, and fall back. Then, after some time, the fleas don't jump so high. They jump up almost as high as the lid, but not quite.

Eventually, the trainer will remove the lid. The fleas could easily escape now, but they don't even try. They've become accustomed to only jumping to a certain height. They have more or less decided that's their limit; they are going as high as they can go, and they don't attempt anything further. Freedom is just a jump away, but it's a jump they don't make. "Stupid fleas," we say. "So void of intelligence that they don't realize the lid has been removed."

But come to think of it, we too sometimes allow ourselves to be limited by barriers that exist only in our minds. We tried and failed at something, and our confidence was shaken. The next time around, when an opportunity arose to try something new or bigger, we didn't rise to the challenge because we didn't think we were capable of doing it.

Life is full of new beginnings and fresh possibilities. As we start a new year, the lesson of the fleas should not be lost on us. We don't have to let the setbacks or mistakes of the past hold us down, like the nonexistent lid on the fleas' jar. No imaginary limits for us! With God's help, we can rise to new heights.
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