Empathy and the Mouse

A few nights ago I was taking my dog Rufus out for his last walk of the day. In the lobby of my building I noticed a teeny tiny mouse in the corner. Looking closer it was apparent that he (why I assign him male gender I don't know) was dead. After our walk I got a small box from my apartment and went down to get the poor little guy and remove him from the lobby. As I was walking down the sidewalk with the box toward the dumpster I came to the intersection of my two streets. I live in a very ecologically- and beautification-conscious neighborhood. It's not uncommon to see a neighbor with a 5-gallon bucket or grocery sack out picking up garbage, etc. 

But I digress. 

Neighbors have created small gardens in the square space at each of the four corners of the intersection where the right angle of the curbs meet the right angle of the sidewalks. Some have flowers, some have native prairie grasses. One neighbor made an herb garden at one corner, free for neighbors to use! In the Fall and Winter people leave the dead plants and leaves from the trees as cover for animals and for natural fertilizer in the Spring. Standing at the corner by one garden I realized this little mouse should be returned to nature. So I scooped some of the dead leaves and plants away and covered him up. I thought it was much more respectful than tossing him into a dumpster in a cardboard box.

Being the empath that I am, when I got back inside I got all choked up. Here was a little mouse minding his own business, living his life, and somehow he met his demise in my building's lobby. I felt so bad for him, but at the same time so good that I did something respectful for him in the end. It probably sounds silly, but for the rest of the evening I played more with Rufus than usual, held him a little tighter, petted him just the way he likes a little longer, and made sure he was all curled up and covered up at bedtime at my feet in the bed where he loves to sleep. I thought about that mouse all night and hoped he knew that someone cared enough to do something kind for him in the end. I've not shared this story with any friends. One, most wouldn't understand it. And two, most of them aren't attuned to the kind of empathy and compassion vibe enough like I am to NOT make fun of me for it. 

That little mouse was a wonderful reminder to me. We don't take time to care about anything. We're just a shitty species who thinks that everything here is for our convenience. That both angers me and disappoints me. I've decided in the Spring I'm going to commit to tending to one of the corner gardens in some way. A little beauty and love for my neighborhood, little critters, insects, and the plants themselves. My tribute to a tiny mouse that helped me not to forget a huge lesson.

Lifting the Curtain on Mental Conditioning

When our eyes are opened to the lifetime of conditioning we've undergone by family and society it can seem overwhelming. The curtain being lifted on that can be staggering. We begin being told at a very early age what to do, what not to do, how to behave, what's "acceptable" and what isn't. In the process we lose our "magic," our wonder, and our zest for living fully. Stifling a young person's creativity and curiosity has incredibly damaging effects in their adulthood. Conformity becomes the norm. We don't know any other way to think.

Then one day we realize what's going on. For some it's a slow wake up. For others it's a sudden jolt. For me it has been a slow realization. With several years of reading, listening to my own thoughts, getting honest with myself, learning to recognize my own deceptive thinking, and regular counseling sessions I've finally arrived at a place of reckoning. I understand what went on in my youth and how it conditioned my thinking and what I know and believe about myself. Once the first hints of that started to appear, the domino effect and the snowball effect took over. It all began to domino in the sense that once one conditioned (and by conditioned the word "false" is inferred here) belief fell, the rest started falling as well. In turn, once the dominos started falling the realizations began snowballing. One realization added on to another, and another, and another. Each domino and addition to the snowball has brought me closer and closer to the intensity and satisfaction of living as full a life as possible in each moment in the best way I can. Are some days more vibrant and alive than others? Of course. Everyday isn't filled with sunshine being pumped up my ass. Some days are a real fucking drag. But armed with the knowledge I've gained and am gaining, I now know those crappy days are not permanent things. 

One of my initial reactions to all of this was to reach back into my past and be angry with myself for not knowing sooner. That's just more conditioning trying to get my new-found thinking back in check. The past can only have as much control over me as I allow it to have. As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, the past cannot reach out from the calendar and yank me back. The past is a memory. There is nothing tangible to those thoughts. Today is today, and yesterday is a wispy memory and tomorrow has yet to be lived. There's absolutely no value is looking back in anger or ahead with anxiousness. The only reason I look back now is for the lessons, not to relive traumatic events. The future isn't something that holds me back from living here and now. Neither have any bearing on what I'm doing right now or this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. 

The other tendancy in these cases is to look back and search for something or someone to blame. For me that's not anything I'm interested in. The people to look back on and blame are not to blame. Just as we all have our baggage we're trying to put down, so is everyone else. We all have demons we're either wrestling or have wrestled. To hold anyone any more accountable than I hold myself is a cruel, unfair, and unloving act. Just as I can't change my past, neither can they. Did I ever look back in anger? You bet I did! When I look back on those people now with my new perspective, I don't look back in anger. I look back with a deeper sense of understanding their motives which immediately brings me and deeper sense of empathy and compassion. To be kinder to ourselves brings being kinder to those in our past. We can no more hold them in contempt. To do so would be ignoring the lessons of the present. 

So today I move forward with a kinder spirit. One firmly rooted in the present and a fuller joy of the moment. We could all stand to have much more of that.