The Amazing Stories of Feral Children

This You Tube clip briefly describes 10 different cases of children who somehow survived conditions unimaginable to most of us.  Most of these cases have some documentation, but there are those that question these stories as well.

Last night I was flipping channels and came across a show called Raised Wild.  That episode was about a boy named John in Uganda who fled his abusive father at age four, sometime after his mother died of a snake bite.  Just past the age of a toddler, John ran into the jungle seeking safety, which is the exact opposite of how most of us think of the jungle.  According to his story, monkeys called vervets came to his aid, handing him food and leaves containing water.  John was found by a man about three years later, and brought out of the jungle into society.  He somehow survived for three years, without humans, with the help of the monkey troupe.  He was slowly rehabilitated back into society by an amazing teacher named Daisy, who went to great lengths to show John affection, teach him human ways, and eventually teach him to speak.  In the show I saw, John is now 27, and living a fairly normal life. 

While this blog is mostly about unlocking your potential as a human being, these cases of feral children show a different side of that potential.  Most of these children, first and foremost, survived tremendous abuse at the hands of their family or caretakers.  As a result, they were taken in by a variety of animals, and given support that their human interactions lacked.  Most of these stories do not end as well as John's.  But the fact that these children survived at all is a testament to the human spirit, or perhaps, the animal spirit locked deep inside each human.  Some people we look up to because of their achievements, others for their dedication to a worthy cause.  But others, like these children, we can find hope in their ability to adapt and survive in incredible, and often terrible, circumstances.

Thought for the day from Johnny Depp

Thought for the day.  I just saw this on Facebook.

"One day the people that didn't believe in you will tell everyone how they met you."  
-Johnny Depp

A couple of thoughts about goals

As a kid, I wondered what made rich and famous people different from the people I grew up with moving from town to town in Ohio.  Why were some people making lots of money as actors, for example, something they actually seemed to enjoy doing?  Meanwhile, the adults I knew worked jobs that most of them didn't like all that well.  What was the difference?

The main difference, I found out over time, was goals.  The people who set themselves apart from the crowd set bigger goals, and then worked to achieve those goals.  I also learned, over many years, that there's a fine art to setting goals.  Some people (like comedian/TV and radio host Steve Harvey) say you need to have HUGE dreams, and then break those dreams down into a whole bunch of small, manageable steps.  Then you make each step a goal.  "Inch by inch, everything's a cinch," is one of Harvey's mantras.

But in my decades as a BMX freestyler, I saw lots of riders set short term goals that they didn't even thing of as goals.  For people in the action sports world, a goal is more like, "Man, I want to learn this trick."  But most of them didn't set HUGE lifetime goals.  By setting short term goals, usually without even realizing they were setting goals, these people opened themselves up to new possibilities.  This brand of thinking carried over when some of these people started their own businesses.  They made things up as they went along, breaking new ground as they went.  Some of these people, like Spike Jonze and the Jackass crew, Travis Pastrana and the Nitro Circus crew, Steve Rocco with World Industries, and Pierre Andre Senizergues with Sole Technology created empires, sort of by accident. 

No matter which way you do it, setting and working towards goals moves you into a different realm then the average "working Joe" (or Jane).  So... do you regularly set goals for yourself?  Are you working towards some goal right now?   

How Fast Do You Drive Your Lamborghini

The clip above is a test of a Lamborghini Aventador, and the reviewer hits 200 mph on a two mile long runway.  Then the professional driver gets in and pushes it a bit higher.  So... how fast do you drive your Lamborghini?

Most of you are thinking... "Lamborghini?  What Lamborghini?"  I doubt anyone reading this actually owns a Lamborghini, or any other car that can go 200 miles per hour.  But what if you got the chance to drive the Lamborghini in the clip above?  How fast would you go?  My guess is that you'd want to get as close to 200 mph as you possibly could.  Right?  For those of you who are Nascar fans, the same goes if you got a chance to drive a race car.  You'd want to get as close to top speed as possible.  Right?

The reason I'm bringing this up harks back to something I heard as a kid.  In the early 1970's, when I was a little kid, my dad read a magazine article that said that humans only use two to three percent of our brains.  My dad told me this, and we wondered what would be possible if we could use our whole brains.  If you look on Wikipedia, there's a page devoted to the "ten percent brain myth."  According to this article, the idea that we only use ten percent of our brains (or a similar small percentage) goes back to the late 1800's.  The article goes on to say that we actually use all of our brains, but certain parts of the brain are more active during various activities.  The article also says that some people believe that if we could tap into a higher percentage of our brains' potential, that we'd be able to do amazing things, maybe even ESP.  The Wikipedia article then says that ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) has never been proven.  Actually the Wikipedia article is wrong on this count.  If you look into the work of Ingo Swann, and Joe McMoneagle (among others), you will find that some ESP abilities have been proven in clinical conditions.  Both Joe and Ingo were part of the U.S. government's remote viewing program that was in operation from about 1974 to 1994.  But this post isn't about ESP.  It's about realizing our own potential in our lives.

The truth is, no one really knows just what the human brain, or the human organism, is really capable of.  But there are examples all around us of people who have used a greater part of their potential than most of us do.  In the business world, we see lots of self-made millionaires and billionaires in a world where a huge percentage of the population lives in poverty.  We see talented people in music and all the arts that connect with us on many levels.  We also have a handful of people throughout history who have shown seemingly impossible abilities.  Ghandi and Martin Luther King, among others, led social movements that continue to affect and inspire people.  Mother Teresa and Peace Pilgrim, and most of the Catholic saints, lived humble lives that impacted and inspired people long after their deaths.  Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the martial art of Aikido, was said to have done things that make him seem like a real-life Yoda.  Then we have the founders of the great religions, like Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, and Mohammed, all of whom influence millions, even billions of people, centuries after their deaths. 

All of these people lived as human beings on this Earth.  Were they born with super powers?  In the case of the religious founders, the answer was probably "yes."  But what about all the other people doing amazing things in this world.  Were they born super humans?  No.  Somehow they found ways to use a much higher percentage of their potential than the average person does.  If we only use two or three percent of our potential, then that's like driving a Lamborghini (or a Nascar car) at six to eight miles per hour, instead of 200 mph.  It we use ten percent of our potential, then that's like driving 20 mph instead of 200 mph.  Let's face it, most of us are driving our human vehicles in first gear with the clutch most of the way in.  Is that all you got?  Really?  So...my question still stands.  How fast do you WANT to drive your Lamborghini?