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A Mango Tree and a Baby

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“Birbal the Wise” is a recurring figure in stories from Moghul India (16th Century). Birbal was an advisor to the emperor, Akbar, and was legendary for his cleverness, quick wits, and sagacity.
Two men lay claim to the same mango tree, and stood bickering and shouting in the palace courtyard. Birbal the Wise was asked to hear their case.
“I see,” said Birbal when it had been explained. “There is but one way to decide fairly. First, we will pick all the mangos and divide them equally between you. Then, chop down the tree, saw it into even lengths, and divide the wood equally as well.”
The first man readily agreed to these terms, but the second one was distraught. “But, Wise Birbal! I have tended to that tree for many years, pruning it and fertilizing it and keeping the birds and monkeys away! Please let this man have it rather than cut it down.”

Birbal turned to the first man. “I now know you are not the owner of this tree.”
Readers familiar with the Old Testament will recognize in this story The Judgment of Solomon. Whether that story made its way to Moghul India and influenced storytellers there, who can say? For those of you not so familiar with that Old Testament story, here is my paraphrase of it:
Two women came before King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a certain baby. The king’s decision was that the baby should be cut in half, so that each mother could have what she claimed was hers. The mother who cried in horror and relinquished her claim was the one Solomon declared the true mother.
A week or so after the Lovely K. heard the story of the Judgment of Solomon, I happened to overhear a drama unfolding in the kitchen, with K. giving voice to two apples who both claimed the same pear. “No, no! Please do not cut the pear in half!” one of the apples begged. “Take it all for yourself!” I don’t remember what piece of food was standing in for King Solomon. It might have been the jar of peanut butter. Clearly the story was already living inside her – if only in fruit form for the time being!  
As parents, we tend to make a big deal of sharing, dividing everything equally. “Fair is fair,” as they say. But some things cannot be shared. Intellectual courage allows us to question rules and discover when their application is destructive, rather than constructive. When rules are inflexible, the result can be a disaster: our children will learn tyranny rather than leadership, citing rigid laws as justification for cruelty, and as a substitute for their own better judgment.

Courage Book Review – the Black Ships

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Yesterday Lisa talked about internal vs. external locus of control.  Today I want to talk about extreme-external locus of control!  I want to talk about Helen of the Fair Cheeks and the death of Achilles.  Yes, the Trojan War.
Offering the Trojan War (and its backstories) to kids 11 years old and up is a fascinating and dramatic way to explore the concept of personal responsibility.  The gods are the ultimate puppeteers here:  Thetis dips Achilles into the River Styx to make him invulnerable; Aphrodite sends Paris to go fall in love with (already married) Helen; Apollo sends disease to the Greeks to punish Agamemnon for kidnapping Chriseis;  Athena, Zeus, Hera — these gods can’t mind their own business for a moment!  They send dreams, they appear in disguise as trusted friends giving counsel, they produce obscuring clouds of mist at crucial moments of battle.  The mortals themselves accept this meddling as natural, if often inconvenient – like weather.
What is so fascinating about all this, aside from the great story-telling of it, is that consciousness itself may have been quite different at the time of these events.  People may not have recognized that their  thoughts, emotions and feelings arose within themselves.  (For a review of the difference between emotions and feelings, please revisit “What is Emotional Courage.”) Ascribing  insight, anger, jealousy or passionate love to an external force may have been all the Ancients could do.  And yet we see glimmers of personal responsibility and internal locus of control shining through chinks in the armor.  Behold the 11 year old child!

 

Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of 'The Iliad'Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of ‘The Iliad’  is amazing.   The epic is rendered into dramatic and lyrical prose that retains much of the flavor and imagery of the poetry.  “Through it all, Diomedes of the Loud War Cry, with his battle drunkenness upon him, went raging up and down the plain, leaving dead men behind him as a flooded river leaves the torn-off limbs of trees.”  “Hector shook his head, and the high horsehair crest of his helmet tossed sideways on the wind along the battlements… He reached out to take his little son in his arms, but the babe shrank back, scared by the great bronze helmet.”  “They thronged about Penthesilea, who shone among her maidens like the moon among stars, tossing up spears in greeting, throwing flowers beneath her horse’s hooves, kissing her feet.”  
The IliadAnother version, The Iliad, retold by Ian Strachan, lacks the lyricism of Sutcliff’s. The compression of events falls somewhat flat as a result.  In this version, Odysseus conceives of the wooden horse, it is built and the ships depart in just three sentences.  Sutcliff’s description of this same pivotal episode is rich with detail.  However, Strachan’s version adds explanatory information to help  modern readers visualize scenes that may simply be too unfamiliar, such as this description of the Greek ships: “Built on huge oak keels, at the waterline each ship had a massive bronze barb jutting from its bows, for ramming and sinking enemy warships.  Eyes were painted high on their prows, intended to ward off evil spirits and help the boats find their way safely to their destinations.” 
Between these two versions there are subtler differences, which speak to the external/internal locus of control discussion.  Here is Sutcliff on the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon: “Then Achilles, who had grown to care for Briseis, would have drawn his sword to fight for her.  But gray-eyed Athene, who was for the Greeks because Aphrodite was for Paris and the Trojans, put it into his mind that no man might fight the High King.”  That is external locus of control. This is Strachan on the same event:  “Achilles was so furious his hand strayed toward the silver hilt of his sword.  Should he kill Agamemnon now or curb his anger?”  That is internal locus of control.  Then we have the origin of the wooden horse.   Here is Sutcliff:  “Then Athene planted in Odysseus’ mind the seed of an idea: one of the cunning ideas for which he was famous.  And he stood up and unfolded it to the listening Greeks.”  External.   Here is Strachan: “Finally, Odysseus came up with an idea that he believed might get the Greeks inside Troy’s unyielding walls.” Internal.  Sutcliff’s retelling thus strikes closer to the original external locus of control, while Strachan’s offers a more modern internal locus of control.  (FYI, the highlights are all added for clarity.)

In my opinion, Strachan is trying to have his cake and eat it too.  He wants to give Achilles and Odysseus credit for positive actions (controlling anger, concocting a genius plan) while still pinning the blame for the whole mess on the gods.  Achilles’ grief needs the consolation of his mother, sea goddess Thetis, and the gods are still to blame when things go against the mortals.  Zeus gets angry, Poseidon butts in, Iris sends messages, Apollo shows up —  You can’t have it both ways!  (Have you ever said that to an 11-year old?  I have!)  Either the gods are in control  of us or they aren’t.  Share both books with your kids if you can, but if you can use only one, use the Sutcliff book.  Ask your child whether she is as willing to take blame as credit.   Talk about the meddling of the gods.  You might be surprised by where the conversation takes you. 

Are You an Inny or an Outy?

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Do you believe that you control your fate or that outside circumstances beyond your control do?  In 1966, psychologist Julian Rotter was busy trying to answer this question and bridge traditional psychoanalytic thought and behaviorism (the zeitgeist at the time) into what is now termed social learning theory.  One aspect of Rotter’s social learning theory, that is particularly relevant to the way we can parent a child to develop courage, is called Locus of Control of Reinforcement.  Locus of control is related to individual difference in the way we generalize our expectancies (i.e. what we think will happen to us in the future). If you want to help your child develop courage, teaching him/her to develop an internal locus of control is important.

Similar to many aspects of parenting, shaping locus of control is not an exact science.  Here are a few ways to help your child develop an internal locus of control:

  • Offer your child opportunities for mastery and success. Look through school extracurricular courses to see what is of interest, pick one per term to try and complete.  Take the time to teach the kinds of skills you hope they will develop before leaving home, e.g. washing their own laundry, loading/unloading the dishwasher, or any of the 5-Minute Courage Workouts and Challenges that we offer.  
  • Ask your child to become responsible for developmentally-appropriate chores and daily tasks.  The rule of thumb here is: show your child how to do the task, ask them if they have any questions, remind them they can ask for help if they need it, and then back away and trust in their abilities to complete the chore/task all on their own.  Notice when they do it without reminding and appreciate they job they’ve done!  
  • Encourage your child to become increasingly independent.  Plant the seeds for specific target dates or future milestones of independence by saying things like “Imagine how proud you will feel when you are in Grade 5 and can walk to school on your own!” “Imagine what you will feel, the personal satisfaction,when you first put on your black belt after completing all your training next year!”
  • Show and trust them to do the right thing.  Mentoring with respect for your child will help nurture the same respect for you from your child. It is hard to expect them to do a task without support the first time.  Talk about hard choices you’ve had to make in your life and how you worked through the pros and cons, risks and benefits.  Highlight people, stories, moments that you believe required moral courage. Modeling this kind of creative problem-solving will help them develop their own inner compass when it comes time to making their own tough decisions.
  • Help them identify the intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards in all they do.  Instead of slathering them with empty praise, bribes, or otherwise external rewards, be specific by asking “What did you learn about yourself when you did that?”  “What do you think about your report card?  What are you most proud of?  How do you think you accomplished that? What would you like to improve on for next quarter?”  “How does it feel now that you made the team after so much practicing?”  Let the natural fruits of their efforts be enough sometimes.  Then, find special ways to celebrate and honor your own and your child’s accomplishments.  It could be a chore-free night, a special dinner or movie night together, calling a relative to tell them the good news, or buying something special to mark the occasion.   By periodically mixing up the reward system, kids are more likely to keep looking inside instead of outside for affirmation and/or approval. 
  • Model for them self-discipline, self-motivation, and how to take responsibility for their own fate.  When we share stories from our lives with our children, with ourselves as the hero/heroine instead of the victim, our children learn from us to expect that they, too, are responsible for the outcome of their lives.

On the other hand, when we continually rescue our children from completing age-appropriate tasks they are fully capable of doing, limit their opportunities to prove their worth and capability, push too hard in areas they are ill-equipped or disinterested in succeeding, or pull them back from accomplishing something due to our own fear, bias, or agenda—our children develop an external locus of control.  They learn to expect others to save them from the burden of responsibility for their life.

Internals (or as I call them, “innies”) learn to see a causal relationship between their behavior and rewards, whereas externals (or “outies”) miss the point altogether and attribute both their successes and failures to forces outside themselves.  

Let’s review:
At the internal locus of control end of the continuum, you have individuals who believe they can control the events of their lives through their decisions and efforts.  The more the internal locus of control, higher the degree of internal self-control, self-motivation, perceived influence on others and our environment, and the more intellectually curious and active we are in our own learning.  Prematurely developing an internal locus of control though, without first having opportunities to be dependent, to develop secure attachment relationships, and be actively supported in to become independent, can burden a young child and lead to egocentrism, alienation, or extreme competitiveness. 
The more we believe that outside forces like God, the environment, powerful others, or chance rule our lives, the more externally we place our locus of control.  Extreme external locus of control appears to be correlated with decreased levels of academic, social, and occupational success and increased levels of mood disorders, drug/alcohol use, and voter apathy (Twenge, Zhang, & Im, 2004).  That said, if the culture you live in embraces an external locus of control, it may be an adaptive response to develop this lens on the world.  The concern is if through this lens you or your child sees a world where your actions make no difference, where you feel alienated or powerless, and/or you want to look away instead of forward with hope for the future.  

Rotter cautioned broad applications of this particular construct in personality theory.  He understood that the interaction between the human being and his/her environment is complex and his/her responses fall on a continuum instead of one particular discrete style.  It may be, for example, a healthy response to fear and life challenge to rely on the spiritual courage associated with having a faith-based practice or belief system.  On the other hand, believing in yourself, using powerful visualization techniques and positive affirmations and having the physical courage to dig deep and finish that fitness training program, may be exactly kind of internal locus of control that is needed.

To find out if you are an ‘inny’ or an ‘outy’, you can take an abbreviated version of Rotter’s 23-item internal vs. external locus of control assessment by clicking here.

Source:

Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalized expectancies of internal versus external control of reinforcements. 
     Psychological Monographs, 80, (whole no. 609). 

Twenge, J., Zhang, L., & Im, C. (2004). Itʼs beyond my control: a cross-temporal meta-analysis of
     increasing externality in locus of control, 1960-2002. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8,
     (3), 308-319. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15454351

5-Minute Courage Workout: Talking Dirty

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Compiled and written by Lisa and Jennifer:

We have become quite the sanitized culture.  Unless you live in a rural community or on a farm, you may have an arm’s-length relationship with dirt.  If you are suffering from a dirt deficit and have forgotten the joy, freedom of self-expression, and just plain fun you can have in the dirt, here’s a workout for you and your kids.  (Younger kids will probably not find this one too challenging and may already be leading you down the garden path: parents, this one may be more for your benefit!) Also, please be sure to read Let’s Talk Dirty.

Here’s a list of 5-Minute Courage Workouts by age range to boost confidence in our dirt-deprived and germophobic world.

Remember, all workouts are more effective when followed regularly.
 Grab Some Lion’s Whiskers Today!

  • Toddler: at this age, your child is likely perfectly comfortable getting down and dirty.  At dinner tonight, put away the cutlery and eat with your hands.  Enjoy the texture, the colors, the sheer squishy sensation of feeling your food before you eat it. If you didn’t pick the ingredients from a garden, tell a five-minute story about the journey your food has taken to get to your plate. Imagine the worms that fertilized that garden squirming around your food just before the farmer’s hand pulled it out of the ground. Say a blessing for all involved in helping plant, grow, tend, harvest, package, and deliver your daily food.
  • Preschooler: get some vegetable or flower or herb seeds, find a spot in the yard or pot you can fill with dirt, and plant the seeds with your child: no gardening gloves allowed! Or find a lonely, long-forgotten houseplant stashed somewhere in your home and offer it a fresh start in a bigger, nutrient-rich, new dirt home (either in your garden or in a larger pot).  Notice where your comfort zone ends with getting dirt under your nails or on your clothes.  Water the earth until it’s nice and muddy and pat down the surface together with loving care.  Talk about how the dirt will give nourishment and protection to the seed while it grows.  See dirt as life-giving and positive rather than a menace.
  • Early elementary student: it’s probably been a few years now since your child has run barefoot around the yard, on the beach, or on a playground. It’s time to kick off the shoes and find some interesting paths to walk barefoot.  Spend five minutes finding as many different surfaces to walk on — some surfaces may even hurt if your tender toes have been cooped up too long.  This is where some physical courage might come in handy! 
  • Upper elementary student or ‘tween:  See if you have any long-forgotten clay or a tube of facial mud mask around the house.  Plan to spend five minutes with your hands in the clay sculpting some exotic creature, or give each other a five-minute mud mask facial.  If you have the opportunity, on the next rainy day find a mud puddle and surprise yourself and your child by sitting in it!  Let go of the worry of dry-cleaning costs and what the neighbors may think.  Bask in the healing properties of mud; have you ever noticed how contented pigs seem to be?  There’s a reason.  Let the nutrients in the mud rejuvenate you and your ‘tween. 
  • High schooler or teen: It’s time for your teen to cook tonight.  The meal could be as simple as spaghetti or scrambled eggs, but it’s going to be served with a twist.  Tonight, dinner is to be served on the floor!   We are not suggesting that you simply sit on the floor to eat off your plates, but that you actually eat off the floor. This could bring up all kinds of inner and outer resistance; notice what you’re feeling and explore with your teen what’s coming up for them. This may provide the perfect opportunity to test what you and your child’s comfort level with getting down and dirty is just before they leave home and eat off someone else’s floor.  You could also try just eating on the floor together, as many cultures around this world do everyday.  You may need to revisit some of the earlier dirt workouts if your teen seems to have skipped a few stages of getting comfortable with dirt.  Improvisational workouts like this provide an opportunity to practice the kind of  emotional, social, physical and for cognitive flexibility that today’s world requires. 
Research suggests that playing with dirt exposes us to beneficial bacteria, and also allows us to build resistance to the less friendly microbes.  Working on these skills may call upon different types of courage, depending upon your child’s particular strengths and/or temperament.  For example, asking some children to play in the dirt may require physical courage, for others social courage if they care what their pals think. Review the Six Types of Courage to figure out which types your child needs to complete this workout.
Here are some additional 5-Minute Courage Workouts: Navigating the Neighborhood, Playing With Fire, A Fate Worse Than Death, Saying I’m Sorry,  It’s a Dog Eat Dog World

We’d love to hear about your results with one of these workouts, or share your own!

Let’s Talk Dirty

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I am a gardener. I get dirty. I often wear dark nail polish in the summer to hide how unscrubbably grimy my fingernails have become.

And that’s okay. Dirt’s not that bad.
Becoming a mom for the first time to a little girl who had already grown out of the crawling stage (so I thought) I was rather foolish about some of the clothing choices I made early on. K. was 8 when she came here, and needed her first snow suit. I bought a white one. Oh dear. She goes to a Waldorf school where there are two recess periods a day, in a play yard that is wood chips and mud. They crawl in it, jump in it, roll in it, dig in it – there seems to be nothing they don’t do with mud. I’d meet her at the gate that first winter, and behold a child in a white snow suit that was entirely coated with mud. 
“You’re new at this, right?” other moms would say with sympathetic smiles.
The following year I bought the snow gear in dark colors, like most of the other moms. K. was still coated with mud at the end of each day, but at least it didn’t show so much.
My relationship with dirt is fairly casual. I ask that she have clean fingernails at school, and clean (ish) clothes, but as a sign of respect for her teachers more than anything else. As for the dirt itself, we’re not afraid of it. I myself used hand sanitizer (usually) in Ethiopia on two visits, but mainly to protect the babies in the orphanage from my American microbes. And K.? My dear girl lived for eight years in one of the world’s poorest countries. For the first five or six of those, she lived in a rural village in a house with mud walls, and she has shared many times that she and the other children routinely picked at the mud walls of their houses and nibbled on the bits. Maybe their bodies craved trace minerals they found in that mud. I don’t know. All I know is that she has an immune system like nothing I’ve ever seen: she has missed only one day of school due to illness in three and a half years. I guess if you can survive 8 years of poverty and want  (by American standards) in rural Africa, you were either hardy to begin with or became hardy because of it.
Physical courage allows us to experience the world without layers and layers of protection – it allows us to experience the world directly, with all of our senses. I always assumed kids were supposed to get dirty. I know I got dirty. I ran barefoot and had scabs on my knees and tree sap in my hair. I stubbed my toes a lot, and endured many painful splinter extractions. But I also caught crayfish in streams, and built forts under giant bushes, and ate raspberries right off the prickery canes. I climbed trees and onto the house roof to smush my fingers into soft, warm tar on summer afternoons. I’ve gone camping and eaten food with sand and ashes in it, and wiped my knife “clean” on my dirty jeans. I don’t want dirt to cause my daughter to hesitate as she experiences the world. And so far, judging by the state of her clothes, it doesn’t!

Another Lion Story (actually two!)

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A startling video on YouTube made the rounds a few years back, about a lion named Christian and the two men who had raised him. The background is that in 1969 these men saw a lion cub for sale in London (let’s not even begin to talk about how this could have been legal) and brought it home, raising it in their apartment and exercising it in the neighboring churchyard. Inevitably, this male lion (named Christian) became too big, and the young men did what they must to reintroduce it to the wild in Africa. More than a year later they returned to look for their old friend; the lion came to them and embraced them, rubbing against them like an overgrown kitty, and even introduced them to its wild-born mate. Watching this video (with a power ballad soundtrack!) brings tears and also the question – how could those men be so sure they were safe? What sort of courage is that?

It immediately brought to mind the story of Androcles and the Lion, one of my favorites from childhood and a great example of emotional courage.
A Greek slave named Androcles was badly abused by his Roman master for many years. One day, when an opportunity presented itself, Androcles ran away, choosing the unknown dangers of the forest over the known dangers of life as a slave. He wandered for many days, hungry and exposed to the elements. At last, he found a cave where he could take shelter, and lay down to rest.
Hours later, a sound awakened him. To his horror, he saw the daylight at the mouth of the cave obscured by a great shape, and by its shaggy mane and powerful frame he recognized his terrible mistake: he had taken shelter in a lion’s den. With a short prayer he resigned himself to his fate and closed his eyes, but when minutes passed with no attack he peeked. The lion lay just within the opening of the cave, grunting as if in pain and licking at a front paw.
Androcles crept closer, and saw that a large green thorn was stuck in the paw, which was swollen and infected from the sap. His heart was pounding with fear, but when the man crept even closer the lion stretched out his leg, as if asking for help. Trembling, Androcles reached out and, bit by bit, worked the thorn loose. The lion sighed, and lay his head down, blinking tiredly at Androcles before falling asleep. Androcles too, exhausted by the fear and relief, soon gave way to sleep.
For several days, Androcles and the lion shared the cave with growing trust and friendship. The lion brought food to Androcles as if the man were the lion’s cub, and they both regained their strength and walked among the trees together. One day, however, a team of hunters ensnared the lion in a net, and guessing that Androcles was a runaway slave, they captured him as well.
In those days, it was the Roman custom to watch criminals be torn to pieces by wild animals as a spectacle in the open-air theater called the Coliseum. This was to be Androcles’ fate, as a warning to other slaves not to try running away. On the appointed day, Androcles was thrown into the ring, while hundreds of spectators cheered and applauded from all sides. On the far side of the arena, a gate was drawn open by a chain, and a ferocious lion burst out, roaring and snarling in rage. 
Androcles stood his ground as the lion charged, and a hush fell upon the blood-thirsty crowd. To their astonishment, the lion stopped when it reached the slave and licked his face. Androcles wrapped his arms around the lion’s neck, for it was the same lion who had been his friend in the forest. So great was the wonder of this event, that the emperor granted pardon to both slave and lion, who spent the rest of their days together as free citizens of Rome.

Courage Book Review – Three by Idries Shah

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Afghan scholar and author, Idries Shah, spent years interpreting the Sufi tradition for a Western audience.  With many illustrated picture books to choose from, Lion’s Whiskers here offers three.

The Silly ChickenFirst, we have The Silly Chicken, illustrated by Jeff Jackson, which offers a very amusing parable about intellectual courage.  I remember many years ago asking myself why people in fantasy stories were always so quick to believe talking animals.  Why would you place such confidence in the accuracy of the animal’s information, or assume a lack of agenda?  Might the animal not be a liar?  Might the animal not be stupid?  In this book, we have a excellent example of why being skeptical of talking animals may be proper wisdom.   A man spends a great deal of effort teaching a chicken to talk; finally, the chicken does speak, and what the chicken says sends the people of the town off into a  hair-tearing panic.  After a great deal of confusion, the people finally discover they’ve been given information by someone with no intelligence at all.  They ask “How could you tell us such a thing?”  And the chicken – with common sense that can only be seen as ironic – replies, “Only silly people would listen to a chicken in the first place.”  In an age when we swallow information – especially alarming information – without chewing first, this is a timely cautionary tale!  The pictures are cheerful with bright, bold primary colors, and the book is sure to amuse young children.  Feel free to act it out.  The story is just begging for exaggeration and silliness.

 

Fatima the Spinner and the TentAnother fine example of intellectual courage is Fatima the Spinner and the Tent, illustrated by Natasha Delmar.  A young woman is the ‘victim’ of one reversal of fortune after another.  With each disaster, she must build her life again in a new place, learn a new trade, acquire different skills.  Just when it seems that she must surely be doomed to a life of bad fortune without let-up, it becomes clear that every single stroke of “bad luck” has prepared her for her ultimate triumph with the intellectual and manual skills she acquired along the way.  We can also see emotional courage at work here, as Fatima picks up the pieces each time, “and within a year or two she was happy and reconciled to her lot.”   The illustrations are beautifully detailed, with borders that change as Fatima’s circumstances change, and illuminated capital letters that give the book the look of an old treasure.  Maps on the endpapers trace Fatima’s journey through the story.

The Old Woman and the EagleLast, we offer The Old Woman and the Eagle, also illustrated by Natasha Delmar.  Here we have a parable that many of us would do well to heed.  An old woman, whose experience of birds is limited to pigeons, finds an eagle in her garden.  Thinking it an odd-looking pigeon, she gives the eagle a pigeon make-over.  Instead of seeing the qualities that make him an eagle, she sees those qualities only as flaws of “pigeon-ness.”  She lacks the intellectual courage to question her assumptions; she lacks the social courage to feel comfortable with something or someone outside her experience; she lacks the emotional courage to let the eagle just be himself but instead tries to make him into a better pigeon. Fortunately for the eagle, he manages to escape and undo the “improvements” she had made to him.  “And with that, the eagles flew back to their own country and returned to their own nests.  And they never went near that silly old woman again.”  Nor do I blame them!  Sometimes it is worth the effort to educate someone about what makes us unique; sometimes our explanations fall on deaf ears.  Emotional courage and social courage allow us to preserve our unique gifts in order to share them with those who will appreciate them!
There are many other illustrated tales from the Sufi tradition by Idries Shah.  Lion’s Whiskers wishes you good fun in discovering the six types of courage within these stories.