POKING THE BEAR
Another in our continuing series of bear posts
The Romany community of Bulgaria has trained bears to dance for hundreds of years. It is a medieval tradition that lived on as a modern vestige of the Dark Ages. They raised the cubs in their homes and the bears lived in captivity with their owner’s family. These were brown bears, ursus arctos, known in North America as the fierce grizzly bear. The trained bears traveled throughout the region, entertaining Bulgarians wherever they went. The bears were taught to imitate celebrities, give massages to humans and even wear ice skates and play hockey. They were plied with booze by their trainers and the bears were often drunk, but they were still able to perform their infamous dances while schnockered.
In 2007, Bulgaria was admitted to the European Union. Part of the price of admission was banning all dancing bear acts; treatment of the bears was rightfully deemed cruel and inhumane. The poor creatures had been captive their entire lives and their spirits had been broken. Some of the bears were alcoholics, addicted to strong spirits that weakened theirs.
Two animal rights organizations, Four Paws and the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, created a special refuge for retired dancing bears. The team at the bear sanctuary had a specialized task: they had to teach freedom to bears who had never been free. Their job was to teach bears to be bears.
The animal behavioral specialists retrained the bears, teaching them how to hibernate, how to hunt, how to have bear sexytime. Food was hidden around the sanctuary to reawaken the foraging instinct that had been trained out of them. The Dancing Bear Park became an ursine experiment in freedom. The bears had to relearn their independence one paw at a time.
Freedom was stressful and strenuous. The bears had to figure out how to live without the threat of the stick or the “treat” of a booze bottle. The sanctuary staff has had great success, but there are times when the bears struggle with the chaos of free will. The difficulty of making their own choices causes pain. At these times the bears revert to the behavior that the rehabilitation staff were trying to get them to unlearn: When they see a human, they get up on their hind legs and dance a jig.
Free will is a challenge not just for retired dancing bears, but for all of us. When we’re scared or threatened, we can fall back on bad habits, just like the bears. We don’t sit up on our haunches and twirl, at least most of us don’t, but we make bad choices, go along with ideas and plans we don’t believe in, close ourselves off to experience. Relying on unhelpful patterned responses lets laziness imprison us.
We all have a key to our own cages. Reading and educating yourself is a way to pick the lock. The only person standing between you and freedom is you. You are the boss of you, there is no one tethering you or muzzling you or making you dance the tarantella. It is up to you to make the most of your time here.
Like the dancing bears of Bulgaria, humans sometimes fall back on bad habits in order to unburden themselves of some of life’s stresses. With greater freedom comes the challenge of greater responsibility. This is why you need a philosophy of life. A life philosophy is not only about the big existential questions such as, How do I live a good life? Why are we here? Does God exist? And, Who thought it was a good idea to give 1000-pound bears booze and make them shake their hind quarters?
A life philosophy is an attitude. It is your vision for your life. It is the direction you want to go, it is what you do with your freedom, it is your purpose. It is a framework to help you make decisions. It is the wisdom you’ll refer to as you navigate the rest of your life.
This post is adapted from our book “Wise Up.” To order:
This: yes.