[Midwest Book Review January 2010]
Invaluable Lessons from a Frog: Seven Life-Enhancing Metaphors
Olivier Clerc
Translated by Louis Marcelin-Rice
Dreamriver Press
19 Grace Court, Apt 2D, Brooklyn NY 11201
9780979790836 $14.95 www.dreamriverpress.com 215-253-4621
Olivier Clerc’s little book, Invaluable Lessons from a Frog: Seven Life-Enhancing Metaphors, offers readers insight into life’s wisdom through seven parables. The simple tales are ripe with meaning, especially the initial adage about the lowly frog who jumps into a pot of water, only to be cooked slowly without his awareness than anything is wrong. Clerc goes on to present nuggets about the butterfly needed to break out of its cocoon by itself, the proverb about wax on hot water, the story of the long delay in darkness that Chinese bamboo must endue before it shoots its way forcefully through the ground to grow to an amazing height in a very short time. And, there are more. Each story is ripe with understandings and deeper meanings about how we grow to our full potential as fully aware and competent individuals.
I enjoyed the images Clerc provided and some of his own interpretations of these allegories. I think these concepts are much needed in our world today because they ask us to question what we have learned in the past and to look at ourselves in very different ways. I, however, had some difficulties with Clerc’s intuitive leaps into his own political and esoteric philosophies and agendas, especially those dealing with alternative medicine. While I appreciate alternative methods and respect those who use them, their discussion here didn’t serve the lessons that Clerc was trying to enlighten us about – and in many cases got the way of the power of these simple parables.
Still, the concepts of these metaphors can serve readers well as meditation tools or even lens to use when looking out at the world around us. Invaluable Lessons from a Frog: Seven Life-Enhancing Metaphors could be the next FISH! business tool or life coaching technique.
