Imitation

Sometimes we like to imitate others when we don’t have confidence in ourselves. We can imitate others with consideration, but it should not be done with ignorance, because if we follow others blindly and without consideration, the there is an element of risk, as illustrated by the following story.

Once upon a time there lived a lion, the King of the jungle who hunted for its own food. One day after killing a buffalo and eating it, it headed for its cave. On the way, it met a fox who asked to be the Lions follower. The lion accepted and took the fox along. Being the Lions follower had meant that it always had food to eat and was getting fatter by the day. As time went by, the fox became deluded, and thought that it too was a Lion and thus wanted to imitate everything that the lion did.

One day it offered the lion to go out hunting for food. The lion gave the fox many warnings, but without prevail the fox went out anyway. On the day that the fox went out hunting, it spotted an elephant and so jumped on its back in an attempt to catch it. But the fox fell off the elephant and was dragged under and trampled to death.

The moral of this story;

When we don’t know our ability and imitate others, we will end up with fatal consequences, just like the fox in the story told above. So we have to learn to know ourselves and our limits. We can then do that with which we are capable of and be successful in life, without putting ourselves at risk