The Elephant in the room...

"If you have an infinite number of rooms with an infinite number of elephants, you're more than likely going to get trampled to shit"
Some dude, 2011

Sometimes I think I only post in this when I have some weird big change in my life. But anyway, that's a different story altogether then what I want to post about....

The Elephant in the room.

Now there's two perspectives I want to talk about this from. The first is the obvious one, what is the elephant in the room? I find it's always a pretty interesting situation. There's something that everyone involved knows about, in fact most of the time are happy to acknowledge something is there, but still it mainly gets ignored. It's bit of a double edged sword really (I love that phrase), on one side, when the 'elephant' is something positive or at least could be something positive if it was talked about, it can be kind of enjoyable to see how it progresses, to see when someone finally gives in and accepts the elephant, or if you want another analogy, when the people involved finally adopt the elephant. (Though it's possible I'm the only person who has ever referred to it that way) So say you have two people, and there's an elephant in the room. Both people could never mention the fact the elephant in the room which would be like neglecting the elephant and undoubtedly, the elephant would eventually die, which isn't great really and will usually lead to regret if the elephant could have been something positive. One of the great things about that phrase comes when both people recognize there's an elephant in the room and are even quite happy to acknowledge the fact the elephant is there, even if they're not going to say what exactly the elephant is even though both parties know exactly what it is. I consider that being something along the lines of, seeing the elephant, and taking care of it to see what it grows into. Eventually though, the elephant isn't going to survive on recognition alone, eventually either one of the two people will have to put down the elephant or both people will have to adopt the elephant. I think it can be a fun thing to see the progression from spotting the elephant to adopting or disowning it. So that's the first thing I like about the elephant in the room. You know it's there, you know in reality it'll have to be dealt with eventually, but how long until that happens? and what happens along the way? The possibilities are always interesting to think about. Anyway, I still haven't mentioned the other reason I like the phrase 'The Elephant in the room'

Why is it an Elephant?

I do get it represents something unusual that everyone can see but wont necessarily comment on it. But if you think about it, wouldn't say a tiger be just as good an animal to use? In fact that could indicate that there's potential negative effects to ignoring it, cause if yo ignore it for long enough it could start chewing on your arm.  Or something more unusual like a whale? That will die if you don't acknowledge it and it would be very unusual because, in case you haven't noticed, those sons of bitches belong in the ocean. Who decided that an elephant would be the best representative for something unspoken that's lurking nearby? Hell it doesn't even have to be an animal. It could be the serial killer in the room. Maybe the choice of representative for the unspoken knowledge is trivial but I still think it's interesting, is it purely just a random animal? Try telling someone there's a bear in the room, rather than thinking there's some unspoken thing, they'll be looking over their shoulder wondering where the fuck the bear is.

And to be fair,
An elephant takes up a lot of space...

E