I open the door to let in the dog, and Phileep, the duck charges after her, right into the mudroom, up a small flight of stairs and into the kitchen under the table, where the cat is resting unsuspectingly on a chair. He (the cat) growls a low, meanacing protest.
Quack, quack quack quaaack QUAACKKK.
I see a glimmer of "perhaps this wasn't the best idea after all" begin to dawn in Phileep's eyes, as he realizes he has never been in this house before, he doesn't know this cat and what it might do, and "oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?"
The dog quickly forgotten, he made a decision to abort. Waddling as fast as his fwap-fwap-feet-smacking steps could take him – he actually fell down the steps in his haste to get back outside where he could see the sky and the world makes sense to a duck. Besides, that's where his woman lives – outside where the grass is tender and there are no stairs.
Moral of the story: Decisions made based on hormones, teritoriality, or defensiveness usually do not turn out like you think they will. You often lose, and feel humiliated in the process.
The past few days, I have been attending a training for a new skill that I have been curious about, and decided to invest in learning. I love learning new things, and it seemed like the time was right.
With the aquisition of a new skill, there is usually a new vocabulary, protocol, set of assumptions, and a new desired outcome. Today, after two days of this training and one more tomorrow, I am exhausted. This adventure is requiring me to suspend my ideas about how things should be done. And this is no easy task.
I think we each have no idea about the strength of the values we hold, the lenses we look through, and the unconscious nature of many or even most of our actions. It is not until you consiously try to embark on something new that you see how difficult this is. And yet, it is so worth it, to acquire the new.
One should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress.
Wikipedia cautions against assuming that the current state of an event is irreversible and clearly determines how or when the event will end …
The still chicken lives! (Currently in our bathtub, no less).
And, in fact, against all odds, is doing better. Hooray! There is something to be said for giving it one's all. Tenacity. Bull-doggedness. Bull-headedness. Did you know one of the Hebrew meanings of the name Miriam is 'stubborn'? Yes, it is true. Never-say-die (no pun intended). There are many things worth not-giving-up-on.
By the Grace of God, our little Camilla is still with us.
Over my kids' spring break we did some sort of throwback to childhood – we watched Spirit, Lion King, Mullan … its pretty fun having grown kids sing at the top of their lungs …
One of my favorite lines from Lion King – the Spirit of Mufassa says to Simba:
You are more than you have become.
It was a call to mature into the King who resided inside, but was still unexpressed.
We all have that space inside us – the best version of us.
We are all more than we have become.
So our quest, should we choose to embark on one, is to keep Becoming. The expressed version of God's-Breath-in-us.
I have a chicken named Camilla, (remember the muppet show in the late 70's / early 80's – Gonzo the great had a similarly named chicken) … Camilla is a very friendly, personable humongous avian version of a rescue puppy. She regularly begs at our picnics and will come running as fast as her chubby body can motor if I call to her.
Well, at least she used to.
About a week ago, I felt like she looked "off."
Chickens are so resiliant, until there is something wrong with them, and then they seem to go downhill quickly. I felt like she needed to be wormed, but in the back of my mind there was this hesitation. We have had some bad luck with several of our birds, losing a duck to a respiratory issue and another duck to a mysterious thing and then a chicken to something else unknown. One duck was saved via diagnosis of worms and then an injection; so now I regularly de-worm everyone. But the mysteries … they plague me. I have tried a variety of approaches to this … purchasing OTC antibiotics and electrolytes to no avail. The last bird we took to the veterinarian right away and he did injectible antibiotics and IV electrolytes to the tune of $100 and the bird died 3 hours later. So it is a discouraging thing.
When I saw our favorite bird looking strange, I thought, I should worm her. But I had company and other issues and I put it off. Each day she looked worse and I kept thinking I should do something but I didn't. Yesterday, she looked terrible and I fell the end was near, yet her eyes were bright, so I didn't pursue putting her down. So what did I do? I wormed her. Today, she is in the house, warm, I'm giving her electrolytes every fifteen minutes and a high concentrated energy food. I probably will go to the feed store when I finish this post and get some penicillan and inject her and do sub-cutaneous fluids.
Heroic, right?
Um, not so much. I bet none of it will work. And I will be ever more so sad, because now I will really have TRIED.
But why didn't I do this sooner?
And, for that matter, why don't others do anything sooner to save their marriage or their job or their relationships with the neighbors or children or co-workers when they see signs of distress? Why don't they change the oil when the light comes on or get the car looked at when the indicator says there is a problem?
We see the warning signs and we ignore them. Why?
Laziness? Avoidence of cost/hassles? Yes, surely.
But I know myself, and my biggest issue with this chicken is that I didn't want to fail AGAIN.
And so, by doing nothing until now, I have almost guarenteed that this will be the case.
Frankl was a contemporary of Freud, and was influenced by him, yet disagreed with Freud, who said that man was basically motivated by pleasure. Frankl theorized that man is motivated by meaning, and that when he has a sense of meaninglessness in regards to his own life, then he uses pleasure to numb himself.
I believe Frankl had these ideas prior to being imprisioned in several (4!) concentration camps, yet his time there seemed to intensify his thoughts on the subject.
He stated that the three main avenues to create meaning in one's life are:
1 – Creating a work or doing a deed.
2-Experiencing Someone or Something ; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work, but also in love.
Most importantly, however,
3-"Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a situation he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by doing so, change himself. He may turn personal tragedy into triumph."
This has given me pause for thought.
And contiues to encourage me to discover my "what next" to pour my energy into.
