While visiting South Africa, I once asked our host over dinner why Africans had never domesticated the zebra. After all, they are horses of a kind—surely they could be put to work, ridden, or used for transport. My question was met with laughter around the table. Our host’s wife, amused, suggested we look it up. A quick search revealed an unexpected answer: zebras have evolved to be temperamentally incapable of being tamed. Unlike horses, they resist domination. They wake each morning to what could be called “the killing fields,” surrounded by predators that see them as dinner—especially lions. Their very survival depends on vigilance, distrust, and an unyielding instinct for freedom.

The zebra’s refusal to be domesticated is not stubbornness—it’s wisdom born of experience. In a world designed to consume them, compliance would mean extinction. Their stripes, unique to each individual, serve both as camouflage and as a symbol of collective strength. When lions charge, zebras scatter and regroup, confusing their attackers through motion and unity. In their world, freedom and survival are one and the same.

That image stayed with me long after the laughter faded. It seemed to speak to something more profound: a philosophy of resistance. In societies where domination—political, economic, or cultural—remains the goal of those in power, “thinking like a zebra” might be exactly what is required. It means maintaining a healthy fear of those who would devour liberty, while never surrendering one’s instinct for autonomy. It means understanding that the threat is real, that vigilance is necessary, and that freedom requires not tameness but courage.

In today’s political environment, where authoritarianism once again prowls the landscape, too many have forgotten what it means to resist. Some have been lulled into complacency, trading the wild beauty of freedom for the illusion of safety. Yet the lesson of the zebra is clear: survival belongs to those who refuse to be domesticated. Democracy itself depends upon citizens who are alert, wary of predators, and unwilling to be harnessed by fear or false promises.

The zebra’s wisdom is not only in its stripes but in its spirit. It knows that danger is real, but domination is worse. To think like a zebra, then, is to live free even when freedom is perilous—to awaken each morning ready to defend the fragile terrain of liberty.