Of Lions & Lion Tamers

A friend of mine has just gone through some emotional upheaval, and I totally understand how he feels. Strangely enough, it’s something I’ve gone through — but whereas I solved my problems with music, literature, art, and video games, I don’t know how to help him out. In my “emotional state” I churned out a little piece that I didn’t know how to finish properly. Partly due to a “change in inspiration”, and partly because I lost sight of my initial goal. Anyway, this is it.

— — — — — — — — — — — -

Of Lions & Lion Tamers…

Lion [ lahy-uhn ]: a big, brutish creature, led by animal instincts and desire. Very attracted to flesh and the thrill of the chase. Very disinclined to captivity or instruction.

Liontamer [ lahy-uhn teym-er ]: one who makes an attempt to permanently convert the above creature from its position as an apex predator and “Lord of all He surveys” to its common household counterpart. A dreamer.

We’ve all seen or heard of circuses (circus? circii?). We all know that any decent circus, has an animal show; and any decent animal show has to have a scene where a person (normally a man with beautiful, long flowing hair and a top hat, but in this case, let’s cast this role to a beautiful woman… with beautiful, long flowing hair and a top hat) shows the audience how they’ve been able to “domesticate” a certain wild creature, and teach it tricks.

The only reason why we find these shows interesting is that we are all waiting for this creature to snap and say, “I’m tired of all this…” and maul the trainer. One of the most popular creatures for these shows is the Lion.

Now let’s take the Lion Tamer’s point of view. She’s been given the Devil’s own job of rewiring a creature’s natural instinct and making it able to obey commands. She does this with a whip, a chair, and the promise of good, tasty fresh meat. Too little whipping makes the Lion arrogant and it doesn’t listen. Too much, and you run the risk of breaking its animal spirit or making it crazy and tired of you. So it IS a difficult job; if you want a pet Lion that is. More often than not, Lion Tamers do it for the money and the fame — few do it because they actually find these creatures interesting and would want to be directly associated with them.

Some may argue, “Well hmm… Money & Glamour are bigger motivations for anything than some form of childish desire or romantic ideals. Moreso, it's ridiculous to tame a Lion just because you “like” it. Sheer nonsense!”

Others may posit that “There’s no need to beat a creature you don’t “like” just for the fame. It’d be easier if the tamer had some emotional attachment to the creature. I mean, Androcles did soothe a Lion by simply removing a thorn from its paw… They’re not simply brutish things that only want to eat you.”

None of these viewpoints matter because they change absolutely nothing. The Lion Tamers will still run out into the jungle and catch some unsuspecting Lion to beat it into submission for some twisted reason.

Now imagine The Lion’s point of view. His instinct is to ambush things to kill and eat them. Some Lions ambush the young ones in a herd because they’re considered easy targets, others go all macho and ambush a fully grown one. Either way, half the time the Lion is fed.

Then along comes a Lion Tamer who traps the Lion in a cage.

Anger! Fury!

Then out of nowhere, the Lion gets fresh meat, cut & pre-skinned no less! He could get used to this kind of treatment…

Every so often the Lion is led outside for exercise. During this exercise, he’s presented with increasingly bizarre obstacles to overcome… all with the promise of fresh meat.

Then after he gets used to seeing this human feed him and exercise him — out comes the whip!

crack — crack — crack — and so on.

When this happens the first time, it behooves him to make a complaint, but there’s nothing he can do because of? …the promise of meat.

After some time, he gets used to hearing the commands and the instructions, and he’s taken out in public where other people can see him run around and jump through hoops.

Eventually, this gets to the Lion and he has two options. He can either:

a) give up and continue to be domesticated.

b) take a stand and do a Lionly thing.

One way or another, this fork in the road is reached… and depending on how the Lion thinks he’s been treated, we can end up with either a very successful Liontamer & a happily domesticated lion, or a mauled Liontamer and a lion skin rug.

So is a Liontamer destined to have a good circus run with a Lion? Probably not. I don’t think such a job is insurable, and the pension plan must be poor. At the end of the day, it’s up to the Lion & the Liontamer to have some form of working relationship with one another. Don’t overwhip, and maulings are kept to a bare minimum. Simple.

…but we as humans only see one aspect of the Tamer-Lion relationship. We’d assume that the Lion, being a mere mindless, flesh-crazed monster, has no option but to follow the rules set by this Liontamer. While Lion Tamers see themselves as benevolent masters that led these Lions out of the bad, bad Jungle and into a warm, cozy cage with free food, and all they ask in return is that the Lion does a few tricks…

The Lion only sees 3 things; the flesh, the whip, and the cage. So is it any wonder that they just revert back to their primal instincts and maul the Tamers? I’d want to maul my captors if ever I was imprisoned in such a manner, and I’m human.

So I’m trying to figure out, what’s the best way to tame a Lion?

(Feel free to draw parallels from this into reality: Life could be the circus, men could be the Lions, and women the Lion Tamers, meat may represent Attraction and the whip and chair may represent Restraint and Social Responsibility… A Circus Tent could be the Universe, and the trapeze could be the Stock Market… Really, just go nuts. Note though, that I’m just using the term “Lion” to represent any dangerous creature. You can replace it with anything else you want if you have something against lions… and the Lion Tamers are referred to as feminine because I like the idea of a woman with a whip commanding a wild creature to do her bidding.)