Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. Today I’d like to share another analogy from the animal kingdom. During a research experiment, a marine biologist once placed a shark into a large holding tank and then released several small bait fish into the tank. As you'd expect, the shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish. The marine biologist then inserted a strong, clear fiberglass partition into the tank to divide it into two separate sides. The shark was placed on one side of the fiberglass and a new set of bait fish on the other.
Again, the shark quickly attacked. This time, however, it slammed into the fiberglass divider. The shark bounced off undeterred, and kept repeating this behavior every few minutes, to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around, unharmed in the second partition. Eventually, about an hour into the experiment, the shark gave up.
This experiment was repeated several dozen times over the next few weeks. Each time, the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack. The marine biologist then removed the fiberglass divider, but the shark didn't attack. The shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish, and so the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.
The lesson is that what once happened to you does not mean it will happen again. We get convinced by previous events, even when things have changed. This is almost identical to the story told yesterday about the gorilla, with a slightly different nuance.
Why are we bringing these examples from the
animal (and fish) kingdoms? What exactly does it have to do with us?
Rabbenu Yona tells us in Shaare Teshuva (gate 1, letter 5) that Hashem gave us our soul and our wisdom in order for us to recognize Him, fear Him, and to control the body in all of its offshoots.
That means we have a brain and an intellect and we’re supposed to be able to control our body. He adds, Just like God gave us the ability to control the animal kingdom, so too, he gave us the ability to control our internal animal. So, all of these examples from the animal kingdom are relevant, because, in truth, we have an animal inside of us.
We'll see tomorrow, B’Ezrat Hashem, that we have many animals inside of us. But we have that gorilla mentality from yesterday, and we have the shark mentality, where we think like the animal instinctively thinks.
If you train an animal enough, that's how he stays conditioned, based on that training.
This concept goes back to what we call the Pavlov’s dog theory. A scientist named Ivan Pavlov did experiments to demonstrate the concept of classical conditioning.
He showed that the dog could be conditioned to associate a neutral stimulus, such as the sound of a bell, with a reflexive response such as salivating, by repeatedly pairing the two stimuli. While the animal smells the food, we ring a bell. Eventually, all we need is the bell and he will automatically connect the two. This concept can be applied to human beings as well, and that’s our point:
Rav Nosson Wachtfogel brings down that the son-in-law of the Elder of Kelm was once asked, what his father in law’s greatness was. He answered that he could be compared to an expert animal trainer who trains lions and tigers and stays with them in the same cage but doesn't take his mind off of them for a moment, because he knows that if he leaves them for a moment, his life is in danger. That's how the Elder of Kelm looked at his own inner animal. As it says, don't trust yourself until the day you die. He was always making sure to control and train that animal within.
All of these animal examples, which we will continue discussing, aren’t just nice mashals/parables. They’re real. We have a shark in us. We have a gorilla in us, and we need to learn from the sharks and gorillas in the outside world, how to deal with the sharks and gorillas inside of us.
Today's main lesson, aside from teaching us that point, which is an important one, is that we should not fall into the trap of that shark, who once upon a time couldn't get to the other side of the tank, but now doesn’t even try, although there's really nothing there stopping him. There are things that we can do, that nothing is really stopping us from doing, except our own internal limitations.
Have a wonderful day.