THE DAILY TAY
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Don’t Feed The Bad Wolf

And so it goes,

“An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life…

He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil—he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.

The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win, Grandfather?”

The Elder simply replied, “The one you feed.”

***

I think about this story a lot. I’m not really a tattoo person, but if I was, I’d like to get “Don’t Feed The Bad Wolf” tattooed across my forehead.

I need to remind myself daily not to feed that bastard. Because boy does mine like to eat. The killer part is he’s got an appetite for everything, not just one type of food. And he finds things to munch on everywhere- Facebook, Instagram, Blog world, real world, not real world, comedy world, Nebraska world, IN MY HEAD. If it’s out there, he’ll eat it.

His appetite is ravenous on Mondays for some reason. From the moment I get up he demands to be fed by remembering all of the stuff I didn’t do over the weekend but should have… the blog posts I didn’t write, the shows I didn’t go see, the auditions I didn’t try for, the screenplay I didn’t work on.

But even tastier are the things other people did that I didn’t, those are his real favorites. Thanks to the connected world we live in, it’s all out there for the taking. The comics, the writers, the bloggers, the Instagrammers, the everyone else excelling just a little bit. faster… Yum, yum, yum…

But fear not. My good wolf is awake on Mondays too. And she’s a feisty little thing herself.

She survives on less food than the other guy, but she’s there and she fights. She fights for what’s real and doesn’t go near the fake stuff… the stuff that is really for the most part an illusion. She pulls the curtain back and reminds me to focus on what’s important and what matters most.

She sees the bigger picture. Ten years from now what will I wish I had been working on today? What would I tell myself to stop worrying about because it’s pointless and silly?

And when she asks those questions I almost always know the answers. I just need someone to ask them.

Today I’m choosing to feed the good Wolfe.

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21 Comments

  1. Samantha Bayer
    June 1, 2015 / 10:06 am

    Love this story.. when I ran the Lincoln Half, the team I ran with had “feed the good wolf” on our shirts in honor of a community member who died of cancer and that story was told at his funeral!

    Reply
  2. Rachel E
    June 1, 2015 / 10:12 am

    This was such a beautiful post and a really necessary reminder for me today – I'm sat in bed, my fourth day off from work in a row, feeling down and generally terrible, but the good wolf is always fighting, isn't she. x

    Rachel | A Little Grey

    Reply
  3. Sunflowers & Sunshine
    June 1, 2015 / 10:30 am

    Few times have I ever gotten the chills while reading a blog post on a Monday.

    Damn you Taylor, you poetic woman you.

    Ps. Thanks for the reminder.

    Fallon

    Reply
  4. Helene in Between
    June 1, 2015 / 10:33 am

    I love this, as you know. I would also, get it tattooed but maybe down my leg?
    I have to constantly remind myself not to feed the bad wolf. It's so hard, maybe one day I'll only be feeding the good wolf.

    Reply
  5. Karen Peterson
    June 1, 2015 / 11:44 am

    I love this. This is seriously one of my favorite posts of yours. At least in recent memory.

    Reply
  8. Morgan Smith
    June 1, 2015 / 12:15 pm

    I really need this reminder this morning. I'm struggling today in so many ways. This is refreshing.

    Reply
  10. Candice H.
    June 1, 2015 / 2:13 pm

    Thanks tAylor! Great story that I hadn't heard before. I am absolutely the worst about having fomo, anxiety and just worrying about things that don't matter.

    Reply
  11. Just Miss C
    June 1, 2015 / 3:58 pm

    I absolutely love this story. It is one of my favorites actually. I think so many times we think negative thoughts and get mad at ourselves for not getting things done. However, worrying about things does not really do us much good. We need to "feed" the good wolf and focus our intentions on what we can do and what we can get done.

    Reply
  12. Jo-Anne's Ramblings
    June 1, 2015 / 8:05 pm

    The bad wolf is greedy and will try and take food from the good wolf so we need to be on our guard to not let it happen and it isn't easy most of the time but we need to try.

    Reply
  13. Noah Weiss
    June 1, 2015 / 10:40 pm

    I think this story is particularly salient nowadays, even more so with the ubiquity of social media allowing the Bad Wolf to feast at the expense of FOMO.

    Reply
  14. Tatiana Cunningham
    June 2, 2015 / 12:43 am

    Good reminder! I feel like everyone from my HS is doing amazing things, going to massive universities and I'm stuck here in the same town at a JC trying to save money for transfer. The Bad Wolf loves that sort of thing, she keeps on stalking instagrams of people who went off to Hawaii for college, haha!

    Reply
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