What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
Especially if you are a squirrel.
Back around 2001, I was working at the Chesterfield hotel in Palm Beach Florida – it was a great place to work, with an awesome team of professionals. (That actually was the most difficult job that I have left – the people treated each other like family).
One thing about South Florida, is the always present squirrel running around. Palm Beach Island, for all it greatness, still has a squirrel or two. They can often be seen darting back and forth through the streets, causing panic in drivers everywhere.
They also like to climb around on powerlines, usually with a higher degree of success than their street crossing efforts.
Usually.
One day while working at the front desk of the hotel, I heard a loud bang- like gunfire- and suddenly, the electricity to the building cut off.
For a little while, we had no idea what happened – but then one of the guys in valet called me over to see something that he found. There in the grass, just below the telephone pole that carries the powerlines, was:
a crispy, fried squirrel. And I mean, really crispy.
Apparently, the squirrel misjudged a jump, or bit a wire, and was electrocuted.
Sometimes, we can be a lot like that squirrel. Just because we don’t know the dangers involved, that does not mean that we are spared from the consequences of our choices.
It’s like that conversation with the police officer who pulls a guy over for speeding. “I’m sorry officer, I had no idea it was only 45mph on this road.”
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, right?
Here’s where all of us can step up to the plate a bit and practice personal accountability. It can be really easy to shrug our shoulders and say “I didn’t know.”
Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.
And maybe the squirrel knew, and maybe he didn’t.
Either way, not knowing did not save him from the natural, immediate, and fatal consequences.
Great post! Sad for the squirrel:)
I work with youth and the topic of consequences often comes up. That the actions and attitudes they have will either lead to a good or negative consequence. Every choice we make leads to a consequence, the key is to make the right choices so that we have good consequences.
Indeed, ignorance of the law, or of electricity (per your squirrel example) is no excuse, though often that’s exactly the way we view it. The real moral is, if we haven’t done our due diligence in terms of at least seeking out the answers surrounding the dangers and pitfalls of our current approaches, we have no one to blame but ourselves when one of those unknowns rears back and bites us. Sure, you can only do so much research, can only possess so much knowledge. Yet, I’ve noticed when some folks fail, they haven’t even taken care of the low hanging fruit. That is, they get tripped up with issues they would have seen coming had they taken the time to look.