The Lion, The Hedgehog and The Case of Missing Self Confidence

Self confidence at times can be a fragile quality. Many other people can destroy our self confidence particularly if our actions are driven by the desire to please them at the expense of what we believe to be true.

Here is the tale of the lion and the hedgehogs.

Once upon a time there was a lion living in the jungle with all his lion friends. One day he grew adventurous and decided to go and see the wider world. He stumbled on the home of the hedgehogs. This was a nice place; a place he liked very much. He asked the head hedgehog if he could stay with them.

“Sorry, you can’t stay here you are too different. Cut off your tail and become like us” said head hedgehog.

With some deep reservations the lion took the advice and cut off his tail. On his return to head hedgehog he was told

“No, still too different. Shave off your hair and come back to me.”

Although he thought this rather drastic, he was eager to please so he shaved off his hair.

“Your claws are too long” retorted the head hedgehog. “You’ll have too chop them off”.

Desperate to gain the acceptance of the hedgehogs he clipped his claws back to nothing and returned to the head hedgehog once more.

“No still not right. Look no matter what you change about yourself, you are still different. It must be your personality. It’s in your nature to be a lion. You will never be a hedgehog so please go away and leave us alone”.

The lion set off to find his old lion friends in the jungle. But once there he found more rejection.

“You’ve lost your identity” cried out one of the others. “You’re no longer a lion”.

No longer a lion and didn’t get to make it to hedgehog status either, whom or what had he become?

The lion had sold his identity in exchange for acceptance by the hedgehogs. He had sold his true self for the approval of others. People can be like this lion too. Perhaps we change the way we dress or do things that other people want despite this going against our better judgement, purely to gain acceptance. This results in either acceptance but no self confidence or rejection and a loss of identity.

Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate but other people do respect others with differing opinions, ideas and interests. By discarding our identity for the acceptance of others we lose our true selves. Yes we can change ourselves for the better but we should do it for ourselves and not for other people.

Although I believe that believing in God is becoming fashionable again it was not that long ago that having a faith deemed us as not conforming. It was not “cool” to declare our belief in God. Yet having our faith, no matter how we choose to follow that faith, forms part of our personality. We must never deny God just to appear to be “cool” in the eyes of others.

Unto thine own self be true.

How fantastic is that?

Terry Norrington