Yertle the Turtle is one of my very favorite yoga texts and should be included, I think, alongside the Gita and Yoga Sutras in any yoga training course. Written in 1958 by the wacky and wonderful Theodore Geisel, otherwise known as Dr Seuss, it tells the tale of a machismo turtle driven by ambition to be king of the pond “on the faraway island of Sala-ma-sond.” The language of Dr. Seuss was instrumental in shaping my frontal cortex, as I fell asleep at age 5 to the likes of The Cat in the Hat and Horton Hears a Who. What deprivation, the child today who is not tucked under the covers in the company of One Fish,Two Fish,Red Fish, Blue Fish or Sam-I-Am! But Yertle was my all-time fav. Now, Yertle was a regular turtle dude, except for his big-headed swagger and urge toward despotic rule. If you need a brush up on the story-line, it goes like this: all the turtles were paddling around happy and harmonious until Yertle goes for the power grab. Cold-blooded and Trumpian, he made all turtles in the pond kowtow to his will and form a turtle tower for him to climb. Now the CEO of Sala-ma-sond ruled over the land—the blueberry bush, the house and the mule. But is that enough for the insatiable ruler? No. Like any real estate mogul, blue-blood billionaire, Yertle wants a higher tower. And not once inside his cozy keratin shell did he care for the social security, the medicaid or diversity and inclusion of those below him. Atop his turtle turret “he sat there on high, saying over and over a ‘great king am I’.”
Like any tyrant full of his own triumph, he had it coming. What goes down at the story’s end is what must befall any megalomaniac blinded by his own power. He gets his comeuppance one day when a downpressed and shell shocked turtle minion at the bottom of the stack can’t take it anymore. The poor turtle named Mack revolts and Yertle falls from his throne-on-high head-long into the mud. Karma prevails. In turtledom as in human society, narcissism and hubris have their limits. Hubris in ancient Greece implied actions against the natural order of things. In early Christianity, hubris is the arrogant belief that man is God’s equal. Self-centered ambition is one of the biggest faux-pas in yoga preventing progress on the path. Today we can only hope that the great Turtle Gods are keeping their aquatic eye open, that for the prideful and the pompous, there will be payback.
Image source: Seuss, & Cohen, C. D. (2008). Yertle the turtle and other stories. Random House.
