Sharas Blog

Growing up, you tend to meet a very wide variety of people, for better or for worse. One of these people was in the least expected place and taught me the simplest lesson, and the one I had gone through my young life refusing to learn. There is not a lot to do where I lived, you go to school and then as much as it shames me to admit now, you go out into a field and drink. You drink a lot. Then against your better judgement you get in your pickup truck and drive it home.

It was at this moment of my young life that I encountered a tree with my front grill. As I stumbled out of the Ford I was met by an older Native American gentleman. To make things even worse, I had crashed my truck on an Indian reserve, which if you don’t know means twice the fine. Hanging my head in embarrassment and a little bit to hide the whiskey on my breath, I stood expecting my retribution. Instead I got a story.

He told me a story of a young boy in his tribe that had the same troubles as I did, was wild and gave no regard for other people. Then he told me that this boy grew up into one of the most intelligent leaders that he ever had the pleasure of meeting. I asked him how this happened, what had changed and this was what he told me.

Every person on this earth is born with two wolves inside of them. One is the considerate, intelligent and loving. The other wolf is the wild and careless, they are forever fighting for control of your mind. The boy had a much stronger ‘wild wolf’ and caused trouble throughout most of his young life. I asked how he had changed into the later man that he was describing. His answer was to change the rest of my life at the massively influential age of 16 years.

The stronger wolf is always the one that you feed.

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Not to undermine the poignant life lesson that I learned on this particular evening while breathing in the potent musk of red diesel from my wreaked truck. I also learned that even if you are driving home instead of walking, always have running shoes in the back seat so that in cases such as this, you can change out of your heels.