“Do you want to be the statue or the bird?”

I read that neat little piece of sophistry the other day and my inclination is to say the statue only because I don’t like the idea of pooping my way to glory. When I land on someone I hope to leave them smelling a little sweeter for my having been there. Being a statue however keeps you steady, standing, still.

What’s to choose from?

I signed up for an ecourse entitled, “The Pathway to Prosperity”. A man named F.W Sears wrote a book in 1914 called “How to Attract Success”. Here’s a bit of his philosophy……”the true law of success is….the law of harmonious attraction. Under this law, things come to us because they want to come and not because we make them come; they remain with us because they want to do so. Instead of working to control the other fellow, we learn to control ourselves and become so strong, powerful and harmonious in our attractive power that the things we want will want us so much that they cannot stay away.”

Way to be a statue F.W.

So let’s say I’m a statue, and because this is my fantasy I can make myself breathtakingly beautiful with a sweet and compelling smile etched onto my features. My hands are carved open and in a beseeching gesture; gold leaf covers me from head to toe and buffed to a brilliant shine. I stand there in all my attractiveness, but I don’t believe it was success that plopped onto my head; I believe it was last night’s dinner deposited by that go-getter dude with wings.

So now I’m the bird. I’m a hawk. My wings cut through the air and far below I spot….dinner. For the sake of my analogy, dinner is a mouse. My eyes never leave my prey and with a powerful and single-minded thrust I slam to the earth and that hapless mouse is mine. I tear him apart with beak and talon. Satiated and full of myself, I take off for a post dinner turn in the park and crap on the shiny golden statue standing there.

I know people like the statue and people like the bird. The statues are never going to get what they want out of life. The birds might, but then there’s another law as old as the one of harmonious attraction; the law of karma.

No wonder sophistry was condemned by Plato. You can’t answer the question without going a little crazy.

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