I think some of the blame goes to well-meaning child
rearing where we tell every kid that she is special and that she deserves to have whatever her heart desires. Every child gets a trophy just for showing up. Because we’re
all special.
Anyhow, I was thinking about all of that this past week as
my wife and I listened to an audio presentation of C. S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy. It’s a tale of a
slave boy who runs away “to Narnia and the North.” And one of his companions is Bree, a talking horse who was born in Narnia, but was captured and enslaved
while still a foal. Though Bree has had a career as a war horse, he never
revealed to his masters that he was a free-born Narnian who could talk.
On their long and dangerous flight to freedom, Bree gallops
away from a lion attack. (Spoiler alert – the lion was Aslan. But you probably
knew that.) As a warhorse, he is ashamed that he didn’t behave with more
courage. And he worries that he may not be able to measure up to the talking
horses in Narnia.
In all honesty Bree was a bit of a stuffed-shirt (or
whatever the horsey equivalent might be) until the lion attack. He seemed always
to be talking about his many battles. It’s fair to say that he thought of
himself as Very Special.
But now his sense of specialness is badly shaken by his own
lack of courage. He becomes despondent and talks about returning to his old
life of slavery. At which point he is given great advice by a character
called The Hermit of the Southern March. (My highlights...)
"My good Horse," said the Hermit…"My good
Horse, you've lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don't put
back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you
sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You're not quite the
great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of
course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being
that. It doesn't follow that you'll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as
long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse,
on the whole, and taking one thing with another. And now, if you and my other
four-footed cousin will come round to the kitchen door we'll see about the
other half of that mash."
That’s a pretty good word for talking horses and for all
the rest of us. Let’s stop insisting on being special and just be thankful we
get to live in Narnia, where everybody knows the only truly special one is Aslan.
