24h • Journal Entries
The Elephant in the Room
Living Louder Journal
Entry 14
It’s not too often that I get a homework assignment sitting at the bottom of my driveway, but today I did.
Laying there on the ground was a child’s paper. A homework story. The title was about the elephant and the five blind men. It’s a common story, one that a lot of people have heard before, and on the surface it seems simple enough. But for whatever reason, today it hit me differently.
Maybe that’s because of where my head has been lately.
The story is straightforward. There is an elephant at a parade. Five blind men approach it and each one touches a different part of the animal. One feels the trunk and says the elephant is like a snake. Another feels the body and says it is like a wall. One feels the leg and says it is like a tree. Another feels the tail and says it is like a rope. Each one comes away convinced that his understanding is the correct one.
And then, as the story goes, they begin arguing.
They fight over who is right. They name call. They insist. They defend their own version of reality. Each one believes that because he touched part of the elephant, he knows the whole elephant.
That’s the part that stuck with me.
Because that’s how life works so much of the time. Not just in business, not just in relationships, not just in bands or teams, but everywhere. People touch one piece of a situation and then act as though they understand the entire thing.
One person sees the wall.
Another sees the snake.
Another sees the tree.
And everybody starts fighting about truth.
But nobody has the whole picture.
And that brings me to something that happened last night with the band.
We’re getting ready for the album, and we were working through the songs, shaping them, listening, adjusting, arguing in the healthy sense of the word, meaning trying to make the material better. Each band member had his own perspective on what he was hearing and what the song needed. One guy wanted a certain feel, another heard a different arrangement, another thought a section should breathe more, another wanted a different emphasis.
Now, I wrote these songs. I had a very particular sense of how they should be played, how they should move, where they should breathe, where they should hit. And because of that, there is a part of me that naturally wants to say, “No, this is the structure. This is how it goes. This is the way I heard it.”
But I listened.
And not just politely. I listened carefully.
I let each man explain what he was hearing, what he thought could improve the song, what he believed would bring the best out of it. And the reason I did that is because experience has taught me that even when I feel strongly about something, I rarely have the full elephant by myself.
That’s part of what this story means to me.
It means that if you want a better result, you have to be willing to let other people feel the parts you cannot feel.
You have to let them describe what they are experiencing, even if it doesn’t immediately match your own perception.
Now, that doesn’t mean all opinions are equal. It doesn’t mean every suggestion is correct. It doesn’t mean leadership disappears and becomes some sort of wishy washy, everybody gets a trophy conversation. It means something much more mature than that.
It means patience.
It means not rushing to judgment too quickly.
It means not being so trapped inside your own theory that you believe your point of view is the only point of view that matters.
That is a dangerous habit.
And I’ve seen that habit over and over in life, in business, in teams, in relationships, in branding conversations, in strategic arguments, in family disputes. Everyone gets attached to their piece of the elephant and then acts as though they are defending reality itself.
But what they’re really defending is their own contact point.
Their own angle.
Their own bias.
That’s why this story matters.
Because one of the strongest leadership lessons I’ve learned is that listening is not passive. Listening is a method of gathering reality.
When I’m working with my team, I try to force that culture into the business. I push people to keep thinking. I ask them to articulate further. I challenge them to go deeper. I do not want surface answers floating around as if they are complete. I want people to pressure test their assumptions.
That’s how better solutions appear.
That’s how bias starts to loosen its grip.
That’s how a business avoids becoming too trapped inside its own thinking.
I’ve always had this instinct, actually. It probably started with my father.
He used to call me “argue face” because I would always ask why.
Why do I have to do that?
Why are we doing it this way?
Why does that matter?
Why does your answer make sense?
And of course, back then it didn’t always go over well. Usually he would win the argument and I’d end up doing what I was told to do anyway, whether it was picking up sticks, bringing in logs, or doing whatever job I didn’t feel like doing.
But even then, the instinct was there.
Why?
Why?
Why?
And that instinct never really left.
If anything, I’ve refined it.
When I interview people, whether it’s on a podcast, in a meeting, in a strategy conversation, or even just over a drink, I always ask multiple whys. I know from experience that the first answer is often just the easy answer. The second answer is slightly better. But by the third why, you start getting to something real.
You start getting underneath the rehearsed response.
Underneath the surface story.
Underneath the obvious.
Sometimes we never get the exact answer in life. I think that’s true. A lot of things remain layered, hidden, or partly mysterious. But the better the question, the deeper the understanding we can reach.
And that deeper understanding is usually where the real value lives.
Surface answers are often just descriptions.
Deeper answers are meaning.
That’s what I think this elephant story is really about.
Not just perception.
Not just patience.
Not just bias.
It’s about being willing to stay in the conversation long enough to get beyond the first interpretation.
Because almost everything that matters in life is more nuanced than it first appears.
That’s true in music.
That’s true in leadership.
That’s true in business.
That’s true in family.
That’s true in branding.
That’s true in almost every argument people have when they are trying desperately to prove that the piece they touched is the whole thing.
And maybe the bigger point is this.
If you are too certain too quickly, you usually stop learning.
But if you stay curious long enough, reality starts to widen.
That is what I want to remember.
And that is what I think was sitting in my driveway this morning disguised as a child’s homework paper.
Interpretation
This entry is really about perspective, patience, and the discipline of not becoming imprisoned by your own first impression.
The story of the elephant and the five blind men is not merely a lesson about disagreement. It is a lesson about how partial truth can become dangerous when it hardens into certainty. Each blind man touched something real, but each mistook a part for the whole. That distinction matters enormously in life.
In your band example, the story becomes practical. You wrote the songs, so you naturally have ownership and vision. But even with ownership, there is wisdom in hearing how other people interpret the material. Their perspective may not replace yours, but it can refine it, deepen it, or reveal blind spots that would otherwise remain hidden.
That same pattern extends into leadership and business. Teams function better when leaders are willing to listen long enough to uncover the deeper layers beneath initial answers. Quick judgments often produce shallow outcomes. A more patient process tends to produce stronger ones.
Your reflection on asking “why” multiple times is especially important. It shows that your instinct has always been to push beneath the surface. The first explanation people give is often incomplete, defensive, or rehearsed. The deeper truth usually appears only after enough thoughtful questioning.
This entry ultimately suggests that wisdom is not about being the first person to state an opinion. It is about being patient enough to understand more fully before deciding what is true.
Lessons From This Entry
First impressions are often incomplete.
People regularly confuse partial truth with total truth.
Listening is not weakness. It is one of the strongest tools of leadership.
The first answer is rarely the deepest answer.
Better questions create better understanding.
If you want stronger outcomes in life, business, music, or relationships, you need the patience to go past the surface and the humility to admit that your perspective may only be one part of the elephant.
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The Elephant in the Room
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