The much-maligned frog

Captain Green, which sprang to life in 1990, was my first encounter of the amphibious kind

[Image: Remember Singapore]

Like its Chinese and English counterparts, Thai culture has a similar frog proverb to refer to ignorant minds who are unaware of the bigger world beyond his/her immediate surroundings.

Interestingly, the Thai equivalent is kop nai kala, which literally means a frog underneath a coconut shell.

Now what has the frog done to incur the wrath of humans to associate it with so these negative traits?

The frog has also been depicted as the unknowing creature in the well-known boiling water anecdote; its cold-blooded nature allows its body temperature to adjust to increasingly warm water until it’s boiled alive. And the boiling frog metaphor is often used to refer to the slow human response to climate change.

In my opinion, humans aren’t just slow to respond to climate change, we’re resistant to changes on the whole. We don’t like making changes to our lifestyles, we are afraid of changing jobs, we are hesitant to make the first move… Because changes bring lots of unknown – it could mean a turn for the worse, but it could also signify a move for the better.

Surely there’s nothing stopping a frog from jumping out of the well? And I dare bet that frogs who made the leap, or flip the coconut shell over, would seldom look back and crave for their past miniscule environments.

Then again, I’m only speaking for myself. In my mid-20s, I ventured out to live in another country. My adopted country isn’t perfect; it’s full of cracked pavements, stray dogs and ice cream served in coconut shells, but it inspires me in more ways than one.

Have you jumped out of the mindset yet? Most importantly, are you willing to make the jump?