What's This Thing Called "Sour Graping"?

There was once a fox in a forest. He was so hungry and was desperately looking for something to eat when he saw a grape oh so violet! 

Suddenly, the fox had another problem. He was a little short to grab the fruit! So he kept jumping and jumping in an attempt to get his food. He kept on jumping and jumping until he got tired. 

Alas, he can't reach the fruit!

The fox was so upset that he turned away from it and declared “That's a sour grape, anyway!”

You may not have heard the story before, but I'm sure it made you smile and recount a number of times you or someone you know had been a fox and did “sour-graping”, an unhelpful attitude where you keep ditching what you can't and don't have.

Instead of trying to find a better solution to your problem, you run away from it.

Instead of trying to find a way on how to get something you want, you turn your back from it and fool yourself and say “it's not worth it anyway”. 

Instead of finding alternative ways, you simply give-up and brainwash yourself that you don't need to have that something anyway.

Don't be confused. If you stopped from achieving something because you realized that it's not really what you've wanted and pursued a different path, that's OK. What's not OK, or what we call sour-graping is when you stopped doing something and end up trash-talking or crucifying what you left.

Source: The Fox and the Grapes (La Fontaine's Fables, 1668)

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So the next time you hear someone says “an iPhone is no good” while holding his “Samsung” phone, or when someone tells you “your watch looks cheap” because it's not the same brand that he's wearing, you have just been taught what to call them...sour grapers?

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