Crabs in the Bucket

Crab fishermen have long known that there is no need to bother putting a lid on the bucket you are using to catch crabs. Once you've tossed in a few crabs, they'll police themselves. Any ambitious crab that decides to make a run for freedom will find it all but impossible to scale the wall of the bucket and scramble over the top. It's not that the bucket is too deep or slippery. It's the seemingly odd behavior of the other crabs. As soon as one starts making a move to scramble over the others and out, its fellow crabs will reach out those long, sharp pincers and pull the errant crab back into the fray. Nobody escapes the crab bucket. That's because no crab will allow another crab to move up and out...even if they have once entertained the same notion themselves. If there were only one crab in the bucket it would certainly escape. However, with more than one crab in the bucket, they grab hold and pull it back down so that it would share the same fate as the rest of them.” This is true with people. If one person attempts to better himself, other people will attempt to drag him back down to share their fate. You must ignore the crabs if you want to be a success in life. Silly crabs. Can't they see that if they just lend a helping pincer, they could form an escape chain and pull the entire group out to freedom? Apparently the crabs don't see it that way. Perhaps they figure that only the one obnoxiously ambitious crab will break free by stepping on the rest of the group in a selfish dash to freedom. Good for one crab, maybe. How about everybody else? Why, they'd risk still being stuck in the bottom of the bucket with one less to support the group. Let us be wise and recognize how we use our pincers. We can choose to prepare, feed, work or hold back with our actions. May we all lift one another and lend our pincer for a chain of escape not a method to hold one in place.