The talking frog

I love Serendipity as I was looking for an idea for this post, I was thinking about my friend who has talked about her anxiety and her attempts to deal with it and she talked about how she was now using, under guided practice a drug called psilocybin and how wonderful she thought the drug was. A few hours later was intrigued to read about a book written by a man who is called Ram Dass, but in an earlier life was called Richard Alpert who along with Timothy Leary, studied the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs psilocybin  and LSD at Harvard.

I decided to look up and find out some information about Ram Dass, as I weaved my way through the wilds of the Internet I stopped at a chapter about how our roles in life change as we grow older. One section caught my eye, it was on dwindling interest in sex with a funny frog story that is enough for today's blog post.

” An older man is walking down the street one afternoon when he hears a voice saying, 'Pssst – could ya help me out?' He looks around but there's nobody there.

“He starts to walk on, and again he hears, 'Pssst – could ya help me out?' Once again, he stops and looks around, and again, there's nobody to been seen. But this time he looks more carefully, and happens to glance down at the sidewalk, where he sees a huge frog.

“Though he's a little embarrassed to be talking to a frog, he asks: 'Did you speak to me?'

“Much to the man's surprise, the frog answers. 'Yes, indeed. Could ya help me out?'

“The man is intrigued and asks, 'Well, what do you want?'

“The frog replies, 'Well, I'm under a curse. If you would kiss me, I would be freed of the curse and I would turn into a beautiful woman who would love you and serve you. I would care for you, warm your bed, and make you so happy!'

“The man stands there for a moment, reflecting, and then picks up the frog, puts it into his pocket, and walks on. After a few minutes, the frog says, 'Hey! You forgot to kiss me.'

“And the man says, 'You know, at my age, I think it might be more interesting to have a talking frog.'”

I love the twist on the old kiss-a-frog story and the idea that he would rather have a talking frog than a “beautiful women is interesting?

Ram Dass takes off from there to discuss how we feel our diminishing sexual passions as a loss and wonder, perhaps, who or what we are without those feelings.

” Well into my 50s,” writes Ram Dass, “I spent a great deal of energy on my sexual appetites, and on appearing sexually attractive to those around me. The older I became, however, the less power that sexual currency seemed to wield.

“People seemed to treat me differently – they treated me with less desire but more respect, and at first this shift around ambivalent feelings...

“These regrets lasted for a number of years before I was able to settle down and relinquish the self-pity of the past.

“When this finally happened, I was amazed by how much more time and attention I had for other things in my life when the trumpets of sexual desire quieted down.”

So, is this story f the talking frog,  perhaps his attempt to understand his satisfaction with the way people treated him after a certain age?