Respect Your Limits

"A guard dog went to the telegraph office to send a telegram.

'Woof,' he wrote. 'Woof. Woof.

Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof.'

The clerk looked at the message and said, 'There are only nine words here. You could add one more ‘Woof’ for the same price.'

'But,' said the dog, 'then it wouldn’t make any sense at all.'

Before the clerk responded on that bargaining, the office door opened, and a young boy came in. He saw the dog, and knew him, and asked, 'What are you doing here, you are supoossed to do your task?'

Panic, the dog replied, 'Nothing, just sending a message to my client because my phone is being hacked.'"

"In Aesop's fables," the Moon started her talk, when she came after greeting with Basmalah and Salaam, "generally, there are regards to the struggle for success and survival point to the existence of certain limits to the protagonist's field of action. The theme that action, especially by the weak, is restricted by both the protagonist's natural capacities and by his opponent's corresponding abilities. The limits, according to Christos A. Zafiropoulos, can be grouped in three categories: personal distinctive qualities and abilities, the circumstances under which action takes place, and the protagonist natural field of action. All of these summarized in three words 'Respect Your Limits.'

With regard to the protagonist's natural qualities and abilities, the general message is that he should not attempt action that his nature does not allow. Sometimes, an animal pays a heavy price for demanding more than his nature allows. The theme of natural limits is related to that of conflict and survival for respecting limits is another way to survive. Zafiropoulos gives us an example,

An eagle flew from a high rock towards the ground and seized a lamb. A jackdaw saw him and, driven by envy, wanted to imitate him. So he flew downwards with a great rush and tried to lift a ram. However, his claws got entangled in the fleece, and he kept beating his wings being unable to fly away, until the shepherd, who noticed what was going on, came up and seized him. And after he cut off his strong wings, as the night was coming, he took him home [as a gift] for his children. When they asked what kind of bird that was, he replied, 'I surely know that he is a jackdaw, but he wants to be an eagle.'

In this particular fable the jackdaw provides a cautionary example of the consequences that follow when somebody goes beyond his field of action and his natural abilities. The reason for the jackdaw's arrest and humiliation lies in his desire, driven by envy, to imitate the eagle's hunting skills, in other words, to enter and play a role (that of the hunter) which is not natural to him. His efforts are doomed to failure, because the jackdaw lacks both the natural abilities and the knowledge of the techniques of a bird of prey. The shepherd stresses the jackdaw's self-deception and denial of his natural role: he knows that the bird is a jackdaw, though the bird pretends to be an eagle. There is also a tragi-comic aspect in the depiction of the jackdaw's hunting enterprise: a small-sized bird that whirls in a hissing sound and tries to lift a disproportionally bigger animal with its small claws. It even tries to outdo its model for mimicry: the eagle lifted a lamb, the jackdaw will lift a ram. The fable is quite realistic in its portrayal of the eagle's hunting skills, which are mirrored through their imitation by the jackdaw. The eagle attacks in a hissing sound from high cliffs, digs his claws in his victim's skin and lifts it.

The protagonist needs to respect his natural distinctive qualities and abilities and the disastrous effects of any attempts to imitate or appropriate other qualities. Samuel Croxall and Thomas Bewick, separately tell us the same fable,

A Mouse being ambitious of marrying into a noble family, paid his addresses to a young Lioness, and at length succeeded in entering into a treaty of marriage with her. When the day appointed for the nuptials arrived, the bridegroom set out in a transport of joy to meet his beloved bride; and coming up to her, passionately threw himself at her feet; but she, like a giddy thing as Miss Lion was, not minding how she walked, accidentally set her foot upon her little spouse, and crushed him to death.

Croxall commented on this fable, that this fable seems intended to show us, how miserable some people make themselves by a wrong choice, when they have all the good things in the world spread before them to choose out of. In short, if that one particular of judgment be wanting, it is not in the power of the greatest monarch upon earth, nor of the repeated smiles of fortune to make us happy. It is the want of possession of a good judgment, which oftentimes makes the prince a poor wretch, and the poor philosopher completely easy. Now, the first and chief degree of judgment is to know one’s self; to be able to make a tolerable estimate of one’s own capacity.

Bewick comments on this fable: Nature has, however, with a strong hand, pointed out the path to be pursued, and a few prudential rules only are necessary to keep us within it.

Some fables, says Zafiropoulos, demonstrate how fruidess it is to fight against a stronger or more skilled opponent is. They represent the second category of limits, those that refer to the conditions under which action takes place. The third category of natural limits are those set by the protagonist's kin or by the natural environment in which he must operate.

The message that everyone should respect his limits is often articulated through fables that result in punishment of him who does not abide by this rule in all its three versions. It is often stressed that it was the protagonist's own will, his personal choice, to abandon his natural limits. Or his actions are described as the results of his jealousy, which forces him to try to attain certain natural qualities or abilities that others possess. In general, it is wrong and disastrous to envy someone for an ability or quality that one has not been granted by nature and to try to attain it through imitation. Punishment for the transgression of one's limits for action might be physical or verbal (the protagonist is rebuked). So, 'Respect Your Limits.' And Allah knows best."

It's time to go, the Moon took her leave followed by singing,

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream

That was just a dream *)

Citations & References:
- Christos A. Zafiropoulos, Ethics in Aesop's fables : the Augustana Collection, Brill
- Thomas Bewick, Bewick's Select Fables, Bickers & Sons
- Samuel Croxall, D.D., Fables of Aesop and Others, Simon Probasco
*) "Loosing My Religion" written by Peter Lawrence Buck, Michael E. Mills, William Berry & Michael J. Stipe

Bahasa