What you may think you know about this cute little rodent is, in all likelihood, wrong. Let's start with the legend. This poor guy, as the story goes, joins in large groups and commits mass suicide as, once the leader jumps off a cliff, all of the others blindly follow to their deaths. It seems this myth started many years ago, but has been perpetuated through the years by, mostly, the media. Maybe the worst transgression was the 1958 Disney documentary White Wilderness, where the cliff-jumping lemmings were filmed, not in their natural habitat, but near downtown Ontario, and they were artificially flung off a cliff by a turntable apparatus created by the film crew. Academy Award-winning, I might add. I can see why this innocent animal has become the metaphor for the blind follower... for now.
The lemming is a rodent that lives in the tundra areas of the northern hemispheres, including northern Canada and Alaska. Periodically, when the population in an area swells, they embark on a mass migration or population dispersal. Sometimes that migration takes them through dangerous areas, even across rivers. As they cross the rivers, some drown, and maybe that is where the legend arose. The intent is not to blindly follow. The intent is to migrate to a better place.
I have been thinking that I don't want to be a lemming. I don't want to blindly do what everyone else around me does just because that's what everyone does. I don't want my kids to grow up to be blind followers. I want them to find their own path, even if that's not where the group is going. And so, we move to Australia. My medical partners, repeatedly, told me I was "crazy". Our friends and neighbors said, "that sounds great, I wish we could do something like that". So I'm pretty proud that we've found the courage to not follow the group, to not do what everyone else around us has done, to get a little uncomfortable in the search for what's best for our family.
Which leads me back to the lemming. It doesn't blindly fling itself off a cliff as myth might tell us. This heroic, brave, tough beast leaves the comfort (or discomfort) of home, of a known and familiar place, and migrates to a place with the hope that life might be better. It's uncomfortable. Maybe dangerous. But it's good. Heroic, even.
Days until departure...still waiting. But start date, January 5.
Next update, more details and less animal pics. Maybe.
-Peter
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