An “old-timer” at my home group shared “The Green Frog Theorem” at a meeting recently. This old-timer isn’t one for deep philosophical theories. In fact, he kind of hates books. “Don’t quote me no fuckin’ page you read in some book. We all can read that shit.” To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if he actually can read, but I’ll take him at his word. It doesn’t matter anyhow. He is living proof that you don’t need to be a bookworm or be “college-educated” to have wisdom, despite what 2020 college students will have you think. The Green Frog Theorem is simple yet profound. It goes like this: If someone calls you a frog, are you going to be upset about it? No. Why? “Because I ain’t no fuckin’ frog,” said the Tennessee old-timer. What if someone calls you an asshole? Are you going to be upset about that? The old-timer said, “well, I ain’t gone answer that one.”
The truth hurts. Lies do not, or at least they shouldn’t. Why should it bother us that somebody said something about us that is untrue, provided that it is indeed untrue? We see examples of “The Green Frog Theorem” at work across the world today. Buzzwords like racist, socialist, sexist, homophobic, and snowflake get thrown around today like Mitch Trubisky passes. They mean fuck all, and they hit nobody because, for a majority of the population, none of them are true. Unless the argument is that people have happily accepted that they are these things and don’t care. I don’t believe that to be the case. You get a reaction of bewilderment when calling someone a Nazi or a Marxist because it’s the same exact thing as calling them a fucking frog. Although being called a frog might hurt if you happen to be French, so for that, I apologize. I’m sure you all will surrender to my apology.
Wait a second. What if we are the ones doing the name-calling? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called other hockey players “pussies,” but declined when they turned around asking me to drop the gloves. Politely. Who might be the pussy in that scenario? Of course, I rationalized my rejection by thinking that my team needed me on the ice more than they needed me in the penalty box. The reality is that I got called out on my own bullshit. I was projecting was what I was doing. The goal here is that, hopefully, I’m accurate in my shit-talking so that he has to deal with his defects or insecurities, which happen to be mine as well, instead of me. This is one of the many problems with social media today. People just get to say shit without fear of consequence and without anybody looking back at them. When was the last time you read a tweet that said, “You know what? You’re right. I need to work on myself before I judge others.” Never. Probably because it has never happened in the history of Twitter. Some Boxers look really, really good when we watch them hitting the heavy bag during training. But then the fight starts, and there is somebody there to punch back. They don’t look so good anymore. Social media is a heavy bag for thoughts and opinions.
However, every now and then, we actually hold the truth right in our hands. What do we do with the actual truth? Well, that’s an easy one. Tell it! Obviously, you don’t just run around dropping truth bombs on everyone for the sake of it. In that case, you’d just be being an asshole. You would be “Disappointment Panda,” as Mark Mason would call it. Google that and buy the book. When do we tell the truth to someone else? There is a particular time and place for that to happen, but that time and place comes after we have told the truth to ourselves. If we want to hit people with the left hook of truth, we better protect ourselves by making sure we know the truth about ourselves. The real World is sparring. Not some social-media-virtual-heavy bag.
One thing I like to do is beat people to the punch and know what I am before they call me it. That didn’t exactly work out when I was knee-deep in alcoholism. People knew I was an alcoholic long before I did. What am I, then? A prideful, sensitive, attention-seeking, lazy addict. For starters. I’m some good things, too, but I’m not really in the business of putting myself over these days. Point being, if someone were to call me any of those things, I might get really pissed off at them. Why? Because it’s the truth. Conversely, I am not going to get mad about any “ist” or “ic” word that gets hurled in my direction. Why? Because it’s not the truth. I most definitely know this to be a fact: I ain’t a fuckin’ frog.
Leave a Reply