Don’t Be a Boiled Frog

For some strange reason, standing in a warm shower, sort of luxuriating in the water coming out from the spout with no effort on my part, seems to lead to numerous “aha” moments. That occurred to me recently. Our hot water heater is aging so I don’t always have the preferred water temperature for the amount of time I would like to stay in the shower. (It’s not that I’m that dirty, I just enjoy the relaxing warmth of the water beating against my back and neck.)

As usual, the water began to cool so I hiked up the temperature knob. This happened 1-2 more times before I decided to get out. And as is normal, when I looked in the mirror, my chest and the front of my shoulders were a warm pink that even my somewhat blind eyes could see. Hence the analogy of the frog being boiled alive.

The story goes that the frog was put in a pan of cold water and despite the fact that the pan was sitting over a hot fire, the frog was perfectly content. As the water commenced to warm gradually, so did the frog but since he had become accustomed to that level of heat, he felt fine. The heat of the water increased but the frog’s acclimation to the temperature didn’t faze him a bit. By the time the frog realized the heated water was getting unhealthy for him, i.e. pretty uncomfortable, his energy was totally sapped by his environment, and he succumbed to his boiled state without a whimper.

The life lesson I deduced from this situation is the danger of compromise. That is not to say that compromise in certain instances may be very necessary. What I’m talking about is the danger of compromising core values, values making up the integrity of our lives.

I can remember back about 35 years ago (that’s what you can do when you’re my ageJ when we decided to disconnect our TV.  On the rare instances when we would go out of town and stay in a motel, it wasn’t long before we were shocked by the language and actions displayed on the shows.

Now, unfortunately, we have allowed our hearing to become calloused or compromised and often find ourselves laughing at innuendos, etc.  That’s just one example of compromise but we could compile a list of attitudes leading to apathy and indifference, both attitudes none of us like to apply to ourselves.

So, as I think about that, I really don’t want to be like the frog who allowed himself to be boiled.!