An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, “Let me tell you a story.”

“I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.” He continued, “It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”

He replied, “The one I feed.”

This jibes with my simplified understanding of Marvin Minsky’s book, “The Society of Mind” that I read many years ago but still think about all the time.  About we each have basically a “society” of contained forces within us.  Separate people, almost.

Today I’ve been in a foul mood. Someone mentioned this story on the internet a few days ago and it came at a time when I could almost physically feel myself feeding the angry mean wolf.  I happened to also be eating junk food at the time, which made the allegory more literal than it was perhaps meant to be taken.  But, at the same time, it feels true that certain foods also feed different wolves, right?

When I’m angry I want foods that are heavy, that’ll drag my mood down a little bit, beat it up.  But in the end that just makes me feel worse.

A healthy meal, while it doesn’t have an immediate impact on my mental state, will in the long run probably feed the healthy wolf more.  So, for lunch, I had a salad and some lentil soup.

Anyway, it’s an old allegory, but it sort of helped me out today.

This entry was posted by Buster on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 10:03 pm. It is filed under Responses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.