I
first encountered this story near the end of the book An
Adult Child's Guide to What's “Normal”
by Friel and Friel, but beyond that, I have no idea where it
originated.
In many ways, I hope to make the monsters of Cognitive
Biases something of friends by what they tell us about ourselves.
May we continue to learn from our mistakes and those uncomfortable
parts of ourselves that tend to scare us. May they become our
respected friends and instruments for fostering healthy growth.
Once
upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a village far from
the big city. The village was nestled in a beautiful, sunlit valley
surrounded by a tall snow-capped mountain range.
As the
little girl grew older, she began to hike in the foothills at the
base of the mountains, and when she became a teenager, she asked her
parents if she could hike over the mountains to the village on the
other side to visit her grandparents.
At
first, her parents were very upset and worried, and they told her
that she could not go. But the little girl pleaded and begged and
argued that someday she would be a young woman, and that she would
have to grow up sometime. After several months of debate, her parents
finally agreed to let her go.
Her
father and mother taught her all that they knew about hiking and
camping and surviving alone in the woods. They made her a backpack
out of sturdy canvas, helped her pack, and then they all knelt down
and prayed that she might have a safe journey. The next day she began
her trek over the mountains.
Her
first night alone was scary, but she managed to build a good fire,
ate some of the sausage and cheese that her father had packed for
her, and then fell asleep, covered by the soft quilts that her mother
had made for her. The howling of the wolves frightened her a little,
but she kept her fire burning brightly most of the night, which made
her feel safer.
The next
day she awoke with the sun, ate her biscuits and jam while sunning
herself on a big granite rock, then began hiking up the mountains.
Late in the afternoon as the sun slipped behind the tops of the
mountains, she reached a fork in the path. She did not know which way
to go. Perplexed, she sat down and prayed for wisdom.
A few
moments later she heard terrible frightening noises coming from the
direction of both paths. Her heart raced and her palms sweated.
Suddenly, from both paths, two monsters appeared. They were growling,
gurgling, grumbling and snorting. The little girl grabbed her
backpack and began to run down the hill, back toward her village, and
then something inside of her told her to stop.
“Other
people have hiked over these mountains and returned to tell about
it,” she thought to herself. “Maybe I’d better go back and see
what this is all about.”
The
little girl stopped and turned around. The monsters had stopped right
at the fork in the road, and something told her that they were trying
to communicate with her. Slowly and carefully she walked back toward
the monsters.
As she
got closer, the monster guarding the path on the left said, “Take
this path, it is much safer, and much quicker. Take this path and
you’ll see your grandparents tomorrow night”
At that
very moment, the monster guarding the path on the right began to
screech and howl a horrible blood-curdling howl. Fire belched from
its mouth; smoke poured from its nose. The little girl was terribly
frightened!
She
bolted toward the monster on the left! As she got closer, she noticed
that the monster on the left was not as ugly as the one on the right;
and it was definitely not as scary. The closer she came to the one on
the left, the louder the one on the right howled. She was so confused
that she did not know what to do.
The
monster on the left spoke in a soft voice, “Trust me. I am not as
ugly as that other monster, and I do not make those disgusting
noises.” With that, the monster on the right screamed and gurgled
and snorted and puffed even more. She began to take the path to the
left, fearful even more that if she did not hurry, the other monster
would chase after her and tear her to shreds.
A few
hundred yards down the left path she looked back to see if the other
monster was chasing her. It was still standing at the fork in the
path, and it was screaming and howling more and more. But it was not
chasing her, and then she stopped. The monster on the left path was
walking a few steps ahead of her, and it just smiled at her, somewhat
condescendingly, as if to say, “Don’t be a fool.”
And then
something inside of her told her to go back and take the right path.
The closer she came to the fork in the road, the faster she ran,
until only seconds later, she was running down the right path and up
into the mountains. She didn’t know why she had made this choice,
but she just kept going. As the last bit of twilight drifted into the
blackness of night, she looked down the mountainside from whence she
had come, she could see the fork in the path, and she could see the
path she had taken as well as the one that she almost took.
Then she
heard a thundering, rumbling, smashing, crashing, crushing sound that
came from the left side of the mountain. Straining to see in the near
darkness, she saw a huge section of the mountain break loose and
hurtle toward the left path below. Tons of rock and earth obliterated
the left path at precisely the time that she would have been there,
had she gone that way. She fell to the ground and cried, releasing
all the anxiety and tension of the past few hours.
Then,
just a few feet in front of her appeared the ugly monster who had
been guarding the right path. She looked up and gazed into its eyes.
It was not howling and grumbling at all. Its eyes seemed peaceful and
deep. Its face had softened into a compassionate gaze. Without
knowing why, the little girl jumped up and kissed the monster on the
nose! The monster blushed, and smiled.
“My
name is Fear,” said the monster, “and that other one’s name is
Destruction. If you run away from me without listening to what I have
to say, you might end up avoiding something that is important for
you. But if you listen to me just right, and learn to make friends
with me, then you will have Wisdom. As for the monster guarding the
left path, no matter how attractive it seems on the surface, nothing
good ever comes from Destruction.”
The
little girl completed her journey. After visiting her grandparents,
safely home in her own village, her parents noticed something very
different about her. She was a young woman now, who had learned to
make friends with her Fear, instead of being paralyzed or destroyed
by it.
Just
a reminder that the purpose of this discussion aims at stimulating
thought and self awareness as tools
to help those in recovery
from trauma learn how to make safer
choices. To make the discussion more jocular, we've defined
Cognitive Biases as “CranioRectal
Inversions” (CRI). Much more to follow!
