The HorsePig
Image under license from Shutterstock
A pig farmer bought a horse. A beautiful male foal, just old enough to leave its mother. He put the foal in a field with 20 pigs.
Surrounded by pigs the foal grew up thinking it was a porker. He wallowed in the mud with the rest of the pigs in the lowest corner of the field. He slept in their muck and competed at their trough for a scrap of rotten swill.
But the foal grew thin and his coat became mangy and he failed to grow. The farmer had an idea. He took a mirror from his wife’s dressing table and held it up to the foal. The foal saw that it was not like the pigs and he wandered away from the herd.
The pigs mocked and said “Who do you think you are, Mr High and Mighty? Are we not good enough for you anymore? Well go if you want, but you’ll be all alone and you’ll starve and die.”
The foal walked to the top of the field and breathed a lungful of fresh clean air and said, “Mmm I like this – it doesn’t smell of pig poo.” He sniffed the sweet long meadow grass and nibbled at it and said, “Mmm I like this – fresh green food.” He looked around him and noticed he was surrounded by grass – there was more than he could eat in a year and the pigs didn’t want it. He heard a trickling of water and turned to see a stream. He drank the sweet water and he said, “Mmm I like this – it doesn’t taste of pig pee.”
He saw a hare racing across the field and he galloped after it, sensing the thrill of speed and feeling the blood coursing through his muscles. He stopped at a tree stump and watched a grasshopper leap into the air and he said, “That looks like fun” and he leaped around the field jumping over mounds of grass, stumps of trees and small bushes.
He saw a butterfly inspecting a meadow flower and he said. “My that’s beautiful.” And he looked around and saw he was surrounded by flowers, and he looked up and he saw the blossom on the trees, heard the wind in the leaves, saw the blue of the sky and he said, “I am surrounded by all this beauty.”
A flock of doves landed at his feet and then flew off over the hedge and out of the field and he said. “They are going somewhere else. I can go somewhere else.” And he galloped after the doves, leaped over the hedge to another meadow and galloped and jumped from field to field. And he said, “I am as free as the birds in the air.”
At last he came to a field with a horse. The young mare came running to greet him. She nuzzled his neck, exhaled into his nostrils. They galloped around the field together, drank from the streams, nibbled at the grass, and marvelled together at the beauty surrounding them. And the foal said. “I am a horse.”
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The moral of this story is that you can spend much of your life surrounded by swine who have low standards, no ambition and no appreciation of the finer things in life, but if you remember who you are and have the courage to walk away and explore life for yourself, you will find freedom and fulfilment and you’ll meet friends who will love you for what you are.
