One of the literary tragedies of this century is the take-away message from Pinocchio:

If you lie your nose will grow longer! And we all know that won’t happen! The real message? When you live a life without discipline and follow others, you become an ass, excuse me, a donkey! And this, unlike the nose thing, does happen!

Just to refresh your memory, Pinocchio is the story of a wooden puppet that comes to life. The wooden puppet wants to become a real boy and carries the viewer along on his journey to do just that. The boy is told by the fairy who gave him life that if he lied his nose would grow longer. And, sure enough, each time he told a fib his nose grew. Along this journey the boy is told about going to this wonderful island where boys could go and be boys. There were no rules on this island, just drinking, smoking and whatever else you wanted to do. The boys who had been on the island the longest started becoming very hairy and started growing donkey tails and donkey ears, thus making the slow conversion into a donkey (or ass, as I think most appropriate in this case!).

For most of my childhood, it was always said that if you told a lie your nose would grow longer just like Pinocchio’s. It wasn’t until I watched the film as an adult that I discovered the real take-away message from the story: If you live a life without discipline, unsightly things will happen to you.

Yes, I do realize that the true tragedy might be that I would take away a message of any sort from this childhood Disney film; however, I have always felt that Disney made things fun, yet somewhat meaningful (and thus his tremendous success). In any event, the important thing is to understand the importance of discipline and the role of it in our lives. Because without it, we will lead the life that is set by others and not ourselves. The American author William Feather once wrote, “If we do not discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.”

This is an integral part of being who you are and not being a cow. Living a disciplined life doesn’t have to be as miserable as it might sound and it is easy to get started … just turn to Day 5. Oh, you mean you haven’t ordered your copy of “Don’t Be A Cow” yet? Please do so today, so you can live your life and not the life established by others. And please continue to come to dontbeacow.com to read our blogs and hopefully share a comment. And follow us on Facebook, twitter, and Instagram.

Discipline will provide the perfect lead in to next week’s blog! See ya’ next week.