The Puppets - Who's Pulling The Strings

Analogies help us better understand things. I recently started thinking about puppets. The string puppets that dance around when you move the strings with your hand. I remember playing with those puppets when I was a young lad...good kid. The puppet now serves as a good icon for our lives.

Think of yourself as a puppet. You are both the puppet and the master of the puppet - the string puller. Your mind can be thought of as the master (string puller), and your body actions & movement as the dance of the puppet. In theory our minds guide our actions and behaviors in the ways we choose. Thus, you dance to your own beat - you pull your own strings. The problem arises when we choose not to be the puppet master. When instead of pulling our own strings we delegate the string pulling to others; or worse inanimate things.

A common puppet set goes like this: a person delegates one string to the economy, the other string to the news, the other string to the day of the week, the other string to a significant other. Alas, no more responsibility, now in this example we are no longer our own masters...we have given away all our powers to act and be as we choose.

Now, we are pulled every which way by the new appointed puppet master. We become clowns...a spectacle...a side-show dancing dramatically to the ambiguous movements of these inanimate string pullers. Ultimately, however, we can choose to wake up and take back our strings, and assume control of our puppets. When this happens you have control, you take responsibility, you dance as you choose. The only actions and behaviors are based on your own string pulling, not somebody else's.

In this way it would not be uncommon for someone to choose to be blissful, energetic, passionate, competent, loving, excited, and optimistic....because all these states of being are as easy simply making a choice...even in the face of spectacles, crises, panics, or what have you.

Angel Armendariz