Silence

Frogs croak, a fact that is believed to have risen concomitantly to their mental capacities. Yet ability does not dictate a commandment to do so. Nor must one incessantly croak for the sake of ostentatiousness. Despite this, society does not openly embrace an abeyance of croaking. Opportunities are to be jumped upon, space is to be utilized, voids are to be filled and silences are to be sonorously aborted.

Our hero has consciously worked towards finding comfort in the absence of external stimulation. She learned to delve into her own mind, sort out the stream of thoughts, reflect, analyze and grow, all within herself. She practices processing her experiences and developing her beliefs without vocalizing them to her surroundings.

Of course there are challenges. Even the most experienced frog, who has visited many puddles and found themselves in an abundance of diverse situations, can feel helpless. Innumerable proverbs across cultures address the fact that frogs cannot live on their own. We are tied to one another, with various degrees of intimacy.

What remains important is that frogs foster the ability to endure a temporary withholding of words. True silence does not exist; while external noise can cease, internal processes are indefinite. More often than not, these processes flourish when the mind is disengaged from external stimuli. Our hero posits that the inability to bask in internal thoughts indicates an un-ease with one's self. Frogs who persist with questions and pester with prattle cannot be entirely at peace with themselves. Feelings of suffocation notwithstanding, our hero is filled with pity towards frogs who cannot bear to be alone with themselves for even a moment.

Silence

Frogs croak, a fact that is believed to have risen concomitantly to their mental capacities. Yet ability does not dictate a commandment to do so. Nor must one incessantly croak for the sake of ostentatiousness. Despite this, society does not openly embrace an abeyance of croaking. Opportunities are to be jumped upon, space is to be utilized, voids are to be filled and silences are to be sonorously aborted.

Our hero has consciously worked towards finding comfort in the absence of external stimulation. She learned to delve into her own mind, sort out the stream of thoughts, reflect, analyze and grow, all within herself. She practices processing her experiences and developing her beliefs without vocalizing them to her surroundings.

Of course there are challenges. Even the most experienced frog, who has visited many puddles and found themselves in an abundance of diverse situations, can feel helpless. Innumerable proverbs across cultures address the fact that frogs cannot live on their own. We are tied to one another, with various degrees of intimacy.

What remains important is that frogs foster the ability to endure a temporary withholding of words. True silence does not exist; while external noise can cease, internal processes are indefinite. More often than not, these processes flourish when the mind is disengaged from external stimuli. Our hero posits that the inability to bask in internal thoughts indicates an un-ease with one's self. Frogs who persist with questions and pester with prattle cannot be entirely at peace with themselves. Feelings of suffocation notwithstanding, our hero is filled with pity towards frogs who cannot bear to be alone with themselves for even a moment.

Connectivity

Ultimately, frogs’ skin is indistinguishable. We run the reductionist risk of lumping frogs into superfluously catholic categories. The opposite, but equally unrealistic, extreme is each frog for himself. Instead, frogs find ways to make the puddle smaller. (link) Communities, whether self-labeled, unlabeled, (by association), or exclusive and fluid, are all guised attempts at making the puddle smaller.

Identity

Elaborate systems are formed to regulate, identify and engage members; these in turn play an instrumental role in forming (link?) frogs’ individual identities. Spuriously, frogs are inculcated with a mass produced, pre-packaged identity. Some systems are more pervasive than others, incorporating all aspects of a frog’s life and sparing none from the watchful eye of the body politic. Such is the community from which our hero hails.

Relativity

Yet some frogs manage to evade absolute programming. Others stumble across a crack, a tonic view, of a parallel reality. A frog who has shaken off, or witnessed the crumbling of, their original community finds themselves in the realm of black and white. Not gray; that would indicate fusion. Instead, the frog can, like its distant reptilian cousin the chameleon, step in and out of whatever system they are surrounded by.

Verity

There is a price for everything. Ventures into new realms are accompanied by uncertainty, feeding the guilt of sidling (looking to the side) another lifestyle. The temptation of the familiar can be irresistible; so much that some frogs quickly recoil - even when their heart is elsewhere. Backtracking to the familiar strains a frog’s moral compass, eschewing fulfillment and self-expression. The psychological rule of thumb: when unsure, retreat from the frontier. Prescribed relationships, previously assumed naturally, turn thespian. The familiar becomes a role-play, whose perfunctory character diminishes any value held by wholehearted community members.

Serenity

Liberation is not a gradual process. Progress cannot be translated into percentages of an end product. Frogs must reach absolute resolution, re-establishing themselves in a comfortable place. This is the only way to true happiness.

Across the Great Divide
Small changes, substantial changes. Yet the essence remains untouched. Our hero made it to the other side. She feels liberated; how she lives has been transformed, not who she is.

Discrepancies and disparities are inevitable. Her inert environment discomfits our labile hero; loneliness pervades the other side. Most notable is the absence of close frogs, as most opt to remain immersed in the familiar. Newly acquainted frogs slowly fill voids left behind.

From the other side, our hero is more perspicacious than she's given credit for. When confided in, she can decode frogs' unhappiness, as if spoken in a secret language. The words are lucent to any frog with heightened awareness to the divide. Extrapolating from vague and befuddled words, our hero reaches out to help frogs make the transition.

A fair dose of confusion ensues between the frogs as they transition from the familiar to the frontier. Before crossing the divide, their relationship with our hero upheld the only social mores they knew. Suddenly everything and anything is possible. They see in each other familiarity, with whom new possibilities can be explored. Yet there is the omnipresent fear that previously suppressed urges will misperceive outlets -- that the breaching of whilom taboos will become fetishized, almost selfishly.

Frogs must be honest with each other, often painfully so. Pent up emotions and feelings have their way of unfolding, and frogs must practice expressing themselves in new ways. Our hero must balance helping other frogs get over their initial fear of the unknown with the need to maintain her own integrity. She must learn to overcome the lurking fear that her genuine inclinations coincide with what adds up to a mere experiment for frogs just getting used to crossing the great divide.

Popping the Ideological Bubble

"Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation"

- Oscar Wilde

The puddle is filled with life. Diverse life-forms that, together, create the eco-system that is our puddle. Variation within species is no less significant than the differences between the species. Frogs are the majority, but are only loosely tied together as members of Anura. In fact, some frogs are so consumed by their own community’s existence that they constantly overlook the collective frog identity.

Visual blindness is an awful impairment; cognitive blindness is even worse. Our hero hails from a part of the puddle analogous to a swamp; the entire sector is bogged in its own existence. The group apotheosizes itself while creating an illusory burden of pure frogdom that it carries as a favor to all others with whom they cohabitate.

All small tadpoles are vulnerable, even more so those coming of age in a homogeneous environment. Their young minds form with warped perceptions about life. A frog can consciously discard the entire frame of reference they were raised on, but this is dwarfed by the compulsion to create a new code.

Defining your new self in anything other than opposition to your old self is no small feat, and our hero now realizes how lucky she was to have gone through this process in a puddle far from the influences she was discontent with.