Seeing The Whole Elephant

In a conversation yesterday, I found myself remembering the old story of the blind men and the elephant. Each man reaches out and touches a different part of the animal. One feels the trunk and says it’s a snake. One feels the leg and says it’s a tree. Another feels the ear and says it’s a fan. Each one is convinced he understands what he’s found. Each one is only touching a small piece of the truth.

The story came up while talking about how rarely we slow down enough to try to understand someone else’s reality. We walk around with our own version of the truth, usually incomplete and shaped by old habits and assumptions, and we’re sure we’re right. We live inside our own narrow prism and forget that it’s only one angle. How often do we give ourselves the space to look deeper inside? And how often do we give others the time to tell us what is true for them?

It’s no wonder we end up frustrated, feeling unseen, or convinced no one “gets” us.

We meet our health in the same way. A good day feels like progress. A bad day feels like a setback. A new symptom feels like a threat. A calm week feels like a breakthrough. We look at these moments as if they tell the whole story.

But they’re just parts of the elephant.

Our bodies are always moving, adjusting, and reorganising. When we cling to each moment and decide what it means right away, we tighten around the experience. The view narrows, and our reactions get louder than the truth itself.

Non-attachment isn’t cold or distant. It’s simply the practice of noticing what’s here without pinning a label on it. When we stop naming everything as good or bad, the nervous system softens. The breath opens. The body has more room to find its way.

If you want to play with this over the next week or two, try:

• When something shifts in your body, pause before deciding what it means.
• Let feelings be feelings. Let sensations be sensations.
• Notice the urge to label. Let the label fall away.
• Hold the moment lightly, the way you might hold a story that isn’t finished yet.

The more space we give ourselves, the more of the elephant we can see. Healing is rarely one moment. It is many moments working together, usually in ways we don’t understand until much later.