The Scorpion and the Turtle Parable…

Last night on my personal fb timeline, I posted: “… thinking out loud: worst thing about being lied to is feeling like you weren’t worth the truth…”

My marketing ninja master friend, Mark Joyner, reached out to me about this and shared with me this parable…

A turtle was happily swimming along a river when a scorpion hailed it from the shore. A scorpion, being a very poor swimmer, asked a turtle to carry him on his back across a river. “Are you mad?” exclaimed the turtle. “You’ll sting me while I’m swimming and I’ll drown.”

“My dear turtle,” laughed the scorpion, “if I were to sting you, you would drown and I would go down with you, and drown as well. Now where is the logic in that?”

The turtle thought this over, and saw the logic of the scorpion’s statement. “You’re right!” cried the turtle. “Hop on!” The scorpion climbed aboard and halfway across the river the scorpion gave the turtle a mighty sting.

As they both sank to the bottom, the turtle resignedly said: “You said there’d be no logic in your stinging me. Why did you do it?” “It has nothing to do with logic,” the drowning scorpion sadly replied.

“It’s just my character.”

I’m taking away 2 lessons from this…

1. People will be who they are no matter how much love & kindness you share with them… they will always stay true to their core, no matter what you do. Their response/reaction to you is not about you or your worth, but about them and how they see themselves and the world around them…
2. Don’t ignore the signs/red flags that will lead you to negative outcomes. Once a stinging scorpion, always a stinging scorpion. If you don’t want to get stung and drown, stay clear of them. We control what we allow in our lives, so choose carefully.

I guess the trick would be to not allow other people’s damaging character change who we are. Sure there are nasty, toxic people creeping around, but not everyone is like that. We just have to be careful of who/what we allow into our lives and know when to let go & move on…

XOXO