Boiling a Frog

We all age every minute a little bit. Slowly. But because we are “in it” it goes mostly unnoticed, unremarkable for the most part. Until the pace picks up and the changes start to happen faster.

We can see it in others. In our parents. Our grandparents. But it is very difficult to see in ourselves.

The story of how to boil a frog is a perfect allegory for the lifecycle of a person.

And it goes like this: “If you were to throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog would jump right out, minorly harmed but would survive at last [This represents a sudden change and therefore clearly noticed by anyone. Just as if you were to take a fall at the age of 20, get up and brush off the dust. Most would survive it without much ado].

As the story goes, you would not be able to boil a frog this way. However, to succeed boiling the poor frog, you should place the frog in a pot of cold water, light the fire underneath it, and allow the temperature of the water to rise very gradually.

At first, the frog would enjoy the warm bath, which would suddenly become a hot tub.

Soon enough, the water would come to a boil, but by then the frog would not have the strength to jump out and that’s ‘how to boil a frog’ “.

Imagine if by magic (or more like an unfortunate event) we were to jump from the age of 20 immediately to the age of 60, like throwing a frog in a pot of boiling water, the sudden shock would certainly make us notice it immediately.

Like the frog, we would quickly try to jump out of the boiling water.

We go from cradle to grave and there is no escaping. The only right choice is to keep our healthspan, our quality of life, and our independence until the very end.

It sounds like an empty promise but it truly isn’t - as long as the frog is not boiled yet!

The trick is to have awareness and the appropriate information to act upon.

🙂