Tigers and Goats and The Change
by Jerry Stifelman, Carrboro, NC
The challenge of marketing/branding sustainability makes me think of an old story that I first heard through Joseph Campbell…
A tiger is orphaned and raised by goats.
It learns to act like a goat, bleat like a goat and eat like a goat.
One day an adult tiger attacks the goats and, of course, spares the tiger.
The adult tiger is quite put off with another tiger displaying all this goat behavior.
He takes the young tiger to his cave and forces him to eat what a tiger needs to eat - -meat — which the young tiger wants nothing to do with.
Next, he takes the young tiger to a pond to show him his reflection.
Finally, he after much struggling and holding down of food, he manages to teach the young tiger to recognize the tiger within himself.
Campbell describes this as a story about enlightenment and as a metaphor for discovering your authentic nature.
We are all tigers living in this world as goats. We must evolve to recognize our tiger natures.
But once you recognize our tiger faces, then what next? How the hell do we go on living among these &*^!! goats?
Campbell’s answer is to “wear the outer garment of the law and the inner garment of the mystic” — yet live with the awareness that all the goats have tigers within them as their true selves.
And in your art, you let them know that they are tigers.
Tags: culture
July 17th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
thank you for your joe cambell story. i see the story as choices that we make in life, to be true to ourselves. and see who we are and also like the name of your company, you could always change………thank you for putting this story out, i will be pondering it for awhile
July 18th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
this reminds me of something my meditation master said: the master is really nothing. he is like a miror, he can only give you what you give him. so bring love only love conquers all…
keep up the good work!