The Year of the Sheep
UNTILTHEFINAL stroke of midnight that brought 2014 to a close, news stories abounded about Chinese couples desperately trying to have babies under the wire, born into the mighty year of the horse rather than that of the fluffy little sheep.
From a certain middle-class perspective, all of this frantic babyplanning makes sense as sheep (or rams) are known best as – cue parental shudder – artists.
Famous sheep include Michelangelo, Franz Liszt and Jane Austen – not mere writers of bodice-rippers and painters of clowns but pure laine, brilliant artists whose work has hardly gone unrecognized.
Add to this list Hollywood darling Julia Roberts, fame-chronicler Barbara Walters and poet-athlete Muhammad Ali and a different portrait of the sheep emerges – one with wolf’s clothes in the back of the closet.
Still, sheep are thought to be dreamy (counting them does help us fall asleep faster), timid, romantic and extravagant: sheep “eat paper,” or money, and are not perceived of as strong leaders, fighters or prudent money-makers.
Yet, in a rapidly shifting world, could sheep be the new horse? Zodiac horses are revered for their refusal to fail at their many endeavors.
Neil Green, the chief executive of consulting firm SenateSHJ, made his annual predictions for the business year ahead, with specific regard to communication.
Mass-global communication allows the public to take an unprecedented role in the way in which results are received, and Green believes that this very public is intolerant of errors, and quick to say so, causing a somewhat fearsome “one strike and you’re out” climate.
Who, then, is better equipped to deal with such imperious demands than a sheep? Other animals will balk or roar: but like Michelangelo or Austen, sheep steadily proceed with the imaginative excellence they are known for.
Sheep are, after all, wool makers, not gatherers. —Lynn Crosbie