Discover Your Inner Majesty
World Elephant Day inspires awareness of our place in the world and our dependence on one another
What is it about elephants that captures our hearts?
They aren’t cute. They aren’t soft and cuddly. They don’t make good pets.
Is it their intelligence? The expansiveness of their ears? The simple majesty of their being?
Is it the extraordinary design of their uniquely versatile trunk, a work of engineering genius that can hold eight liters of water, uproot a sapling, or take a peanut from a child’s finger and separate it from its shell?
Or is it the elephant’s capacity to never forget the summons us to remember our own humanity?
Once upon a time…
The Hebrew word zakhor, translated as remember, actually means much more than call to mind. It means take to heart, value, consider as an object of importance.
What is memory but the hope for immortality? Neither is it enough for us to be merely remembered. We want to be thought of with affection. We want to be held in esteem for the investment we’ve made in others, for our accomplishments and achievements. We want our existence to have changed the world in a way that endures after we’re gone.
