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Pyotr Patrushev ©2006 Email: rustran@gmail.com

See Pyotr's translation and interpreting webpage: www.russiantranslate.org

The paradox of Success and Failure 
in Life and in Therapy

We have all heard the story of the hundredth monkey. It is a marvelously inspiring tale, albeit largely apocryphal.  But personally, I find the stories of an Electric Dog and a Water Shrew more appealing and instructive.

Fido was a very clever dog, with a doggy IQ, of 140. However, an even cleverer psychologist, who was like God to Fido, designed a test for him. He put Fido into a box, divided it into two, with a gate in between, and put a light bulb in each box. He also … cunning fellow … connected electricity to the metal grid that was the floor in Fido's new home. Then he lit up the bulb and, within a few seconds, turned the switch on. Fido catapulted himself into the safely of the box nеxt door. But soon the light went on in there also, and the shock came, and Fido jumped back through the gate in a flash. It did not take him long to draw conclusions. As soon as the light would go on, Fido would speedily repair to the other box. No more shocks. Phew! This went on for a very long time (5,000 times to be exact). Soon Fido knew what they meant by the stress of modern (dog's) life. But at he least thought that he was smart: no more shocks. This faith in his own intelligence kept him going through the loops. What be did not know was that the Creator of the Experiment had long ago disconnected the electricity. No more shocks. But Fido never bothered to check the grid. He just kept jumping. Know what I mean? Big on brains, low on trust. Fido could learn a trick or two from the lowly Water Shrew who lived in a swamp by the creek, if he stopped being so proud of his intelligence. For the Water Shrew was a master cartographer. To get to a water hole, the Shrew studies the path with utmost care for a long time. Every branch, every stone gets scanned and put into a 3-D map. Once the Job is done, whoosh, the Shrew is at the water hole no time all. What happens if we put a brick in his carefully planned path? Is our Shrew smarter than Fido? Here he goes, up the tree, takes a run and-smack!!- straight into the brick at 100mph. Ouch!! Shakes his head, up again- maybe be was up a wrong tree or something... Smack!!- into the brick at 100pmh. This time, he goes into a meditation, Then, very, very slowly -1 mile per hour - he climbs down. checking every step. The brick gets stored into the file. He can now cover the path at l00mph again. He redrew the map. Smart. Some people will tell you that they know how to turn frogs into princes (nothing personal against NLP-just a metaphor), Failure into success. They forget to tell you sometimes that yours- and theirs, and society's- picture of success is coloured by our individual experiences of failure. For Fido, success is being a super jumper. Keeping one step ahead of the lights. He takes up aerobics and relaxation classes, goes on a Pritikin diet, buys a bagful of multi vitamins and subscribes to a health and illness magazine. He is too busy finding solutions to his problem to check the grid, to redraw the map of his past experience. Before you can say "Jump" he is an old and disillusioned dog. His life is not much more than a log­book of burnt calories, (The message is: Don't get hung up on techniques and solutions. They are fine, as long as they do not prevent you from taking your soul to a spiritual laundromat.) If being a Prince is yours... or your therapist's idea of success then, before you program yourself to become one, you may wish to do a Water Shrew Meditation. You may descend, ever so slowly and carefully-1 mph?-into the belly of the frog, where the Prince is supposed to hide. There, among the long-for­gotten sensations, smells and. sounds, you may discover why you are who you are. Then, and only then, it may become apparent to you who you really want to be. You almost certainly will not want to be a Prince. That puts you into too high a tax bracket. Plus there are those nasty kidnappers who want to cut off your ears. No thanks. Is this too simple? Sure. Our whole personality, our karmic path if you wish is shaped in the belly of the frog over many, many lifetimes (here I mean it in a real, biological sense, although you are free to impose your own interpretation). Fido would not dream of doing a past life regression. You have to be infinitely mindful to unravel a map that old and patient, and trusting that whoever designed this experiment called Life was not just a smart Alec psychologist who makes us jump until we are blue in the face in order to prove to his PhD committee how smart he Is. Herman Melville remarked that. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." And also: "He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great." Well, we do not want to worship failure either. To be an "original failure" will proba­bly make you a bore at parties - if you ever get invited at all. If you re-examine your path to the water hole really carefully, you may go beyond the habitual ideas of success and failure altogether. The Water Shrew would not buy anyone else's idea of how to get to the destination. And he's been around a lot longer than us. Have a happy journey.

I am grateful to Ron Kurtz, the founder of Hakomi Therapy, for the two animal stories. The Electric Dog Experiment was actually carried out by Solomon and Wynn, and reported In the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1942.