You Can't Boil A Frog

“The poison was never forced. It was offered gently, until you forgot it was poison at all” -Mark Twain

There’s a popular idea that if you place a frog into a pot of water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog will die before it ever recognizes the danger. Turns out, that’s not true. Biologists have tested this experiment and at a certain threshold the frog will exit its hot tub. There’s no literal truth in this parable, but there’s plenty of symbolism.

You should be less scared of the flaws you recognize. After all you’ve already taken step one in resolving them by acknowledging that they are flaws. The real trouble is the things you don’t perceive. Or worse, the things you once knew were bad but have now burnt off your own nerve endings and can’t tell the difference. Ignorance and willful rejection yield the same results. However, the former deserves pity and the latter deserves the boiling.

Look around you, there’s no sadistic Biologist looking to boil you alive and there certainly isn’t anyone forcing poison down your throat. You are all the characters in the narrative. You get to decide what happens next.

Stop drinking, jump out.