The Story
There was once a prince who took ill and decided he was a turkey. Stripping off his clothes, he crouched naked under the royal table, refusing to eat anything but crumbs which had fallen to the ground. The king was greatly upset. Many doctors were called to the palace to examine the prince but none could offer a cure.
One day a wise man came to the king and said, "Let me live in your home that I might befriend your son. Be patient and I will make him well again." Immediately the sage approached the royal table, stripped off his clothes and sat down naked next to the prince.
"Who are you and what are you?" demanded the king's son.
"I am your friend, a turkey like yourself," the wise man replied. "I thought you might be lonely and decided to come and live with you for a while."
Some weeks passed. The "turkeys" grew accustomed to each other and soon became good friends. They ate crumbs, drank from tin plates and discussed the advantages of being domesticated birds rather than men.
One night, when the royal family was having dinner, the wise man signaled to the king, whose servants brought two silk robes and cautiously placed them under the table.
The sage quickly donned one of the robes and before the king's son could utter a word proudly announced, "There are some dumb turkeys who are so insecure that they believe putting on a silk robe might endanger their identity." The prince thought for a moment, nodded his head and began to clothe himself.
Some days later the wise man once again signaled the king. Broiled beef, baked potatoes, and fresh green vegetables were brought and placed on the ground near the sage. Looking quite pleased with himself, the wise man bit into his food and exclaimed, "Absolutely delicious! It's good to be a turkey sophisticated enough to enjoy the food of men." The prince readily agreed and hungrily ate his fill.
Eventually, the wise man called for some silverware and asked to be served from the king's good china. "After all," he explained to the prince, "why shouldn't intelligent turkeys want the best for themselves?"
Finally, after many months the sage came and sat by the table. While eating and drinking with the royal family, he called down to the prince and said, "Come join me. The food is the same but the chairs make an appreciable difference. Besides we turkeys have a lot to offer. Why should we restrict ourselves by remaining aloof? Certainly our ideas can benefit the minds of men."
The king's son came and sat by the table. It was only a matter of time until he was cured.
The Need To 'Fix' Abnormal Behaviour
In this story told by Reb Nachman of Braslev, the king's son believes himself to be a turkey. The king, alarmed by this gross abnormality does everything in his power to "fix" his son. He calls upon the best doctors in the kingdom for help, but to no avail.
How often do we do this to each other? Someone - and often it is someone to whom we are close - offends our sense of what is acceptable and frantically we try to make that person 'right.'
We might attempt to diagnose their malady and analyze the person out of his or her mishap. We can be so intent on making a 'sick' person the way we think they should be that we can forget to ask important questions like: What is the source of this person's affliction? What is it he or she may actually be experiencing within his or her being?
And we can do it to ourselves aswell. Maybe we see ourselves as 'not fitting in,' being abnormal, different, stupid, unlovable…we feel like a "turkey" of some sort, unable to sit with the majority of the family, behaving in a ‘normal' way.
And then, like the prince in the story, we may cut ourselves off from others - hiding, feeling ashamed and experiencing people like our parents desperately trying to "fix" us.
Loving The 'Turkey' Within Us
What would it be like not to try and expel the turkey from sight? What would it be like to make friends with the turkey within us and actually get to know it?
The wise man in the story strips down naked and gets under the table with the turkey prince. "Who are you?" the prince asks and the sage answers: "I'm a turkey just like you. I thought you might be lonely and I've come to live with you for a while".
I think this is beautiful, because we all have 'turkey' parts - sides of ourselves that don't fit in with the norm - and these awkward aspects of ourselves are deserving of love and as much a part of the great scheme of things as anything.
Instead of attempting to find a cure for our friend or relative or ourselves undergoing a 'turkey' attack, perhaps we could find a way to say that it's ok to have times of not fitting in, of not being able to sit at the common table.
And who's to say that in our turkey moments we need curing. Perhaps if we allow our turkey parts to come up into the light, into the open, we might find that - as the wise man says to his turkey prince friend - "we turkeys have a lot to offer and our ideas can greatly benefit the minds of men."