Teaching Pigs to Sing

Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig” [Robert Heinlein].

I don’t recall when I initially discovered this quote; but I have to tell you, it’s one of my all-time favorites. It’s smart. It’s funny. It’s true.

First, I want you to imagine walking through the pig barn at your local fair. The smell. The sound of all the pigs grunting. The straw and scraps of food littering the stalls. The noise. The smell. The chaos.

Now, imagine kneeling down at one pen, attempting to get a pig’s attention and trying to coax him over to you. Then, when you finally have made eye contact and convinced that pig that it is in his best interest to walk to your side of the pen, think about what it would be like to begin singing “The Wheels on the Bus” and encouraging the pig to sing along.

What would you would say to encourage the pig? “Come on, pig! Join me, won’t you? I just know you can do it! Isn’t this fun?”

Regardless of how many meetings you schedule, the team-building experiences you select, the books you read, the personal experiences you share, the coaching sessions you employ, the incentives you offer, or the “expert 5-point plan” that worked over at Old MacDonald’s, that pig is simply not going to sing.

Even if you were meeting that pig’s immediate desire with food or a scratch on the head, the pig will not only refuse to sing, he will quickly return to the satisfaction of his feed trough, or the comfort of the straw piled in the corner and succumb to a nap. He behaves like a pig — that’s what he knows.

“Half of the unhappiness in the world is due to the failure of plans which were never reasonable, and often impossible” [Edgar Watson Howe].

Teaching a pig to sing is a waste of your time. No matter how desperately you want him to sing and how much time you’re willing to invest, he’s just not going to do it!

Let’s face facts. Some people, regardless of your very best intentions, will never want to play nice. They take pride in being self-indulgent, disrespectful, obstinate, condescending, manipulating, and narrow minded. For whatever reason, they enjoy any opportunity which allows their toxic life to spill all over anyone unfortunate enough to stand in their way.

Although our ultimate goal may be to build a harmonious and fulfilling relationship, that which is defective in the lives of discontented people is not something you can easily “fix” any more successfully than you can teach a pig to sing simply because you expect he should.

“Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect” [Margaret Mitchell].

Even Albert Einstein realized that continuing to spend your energy teaching pigs to sing, constituted lunacy. He said it this way: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Let me give it to you straight: That pig is not going to sing. Quit wasting your time.

Whatever you are, be a good one!

Deanna