Blog #2

Here is a link to an article by Johnathon Flaum called Find Your Howl.  This article is about finding ways to express yourself and things that make us who we really are.  This article begins with a story about a pack of red wolves.  These wolves were extremely endangered and were kept in captivity in order to keep them from dying in the wild.  After a new generation of these wolves were born they were set out into the wild to see if they could adapt.  They were as normal as could be except for one thing-- they did not know how to howl. Without their howls, they felt vulnerable because they could not be feared.  They all wanted to return to captivity.  All except for one wolf named Mumon.  Mumon hated captivity because he was simply handed food instead of hunting for it as he was meant to.  He left the others and went off to find food.  He came upon a deer that gave him advice about how to find his howl, after which he killed and ate the deer.  Later a group of birds came to finish the deer carcass and also gave Mumon advice.  He then received a jolt of energy and ran for days and days, shedding what he had been before and becoming what nature had intended him to be.  He then came upon a farmer that shot him and put him into a trance, where he saw a tribe dancing around a fire.  He entered the fire and began to howl.  When he awoke from the trance the tribe had become his pack and he was standing on a rock howling.  His pack answered his call and howled with him.  The point that Flaum is making here is that we have to escape everything around us in order to find our "howl".  By spending time alone in the forest Mumon discovered what it was that gave a wolf its howl.  We must spend some time discovering ourselves and expressing ourselves.  Sometimes that is what it takes to find out what really makes us “us”.

                             

"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."

This quote really speaks to me because its message is basically that we are all creative geniuses, we just have to find our inner self and use that individuality to help us.  It also relates to the article in that way.  Also, it says that the world is all opportunities, which is true.  You just have to seek them out and make the most of them.