Watching For Foxes

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Benjamin Franklin


“When we’re still learning, we call it practice.”

Laurie 2.0


This post departs from a bit from the previous ones, but it's important in your process of re-versioning.

This is a meditation about pain.

How do people change? In nature, we ask, “How does change happen?” and consider it a natural tendency of the physical world. But since we’re “conscious, intelligent beings with free will,” we ask, “How do I change?”

I’m thinking the two are not unrelated, since we are nature and the physical world. And our change – the change of any sentient being – is sparked by an experience, an interaction, with the Real World Out There.

For example – my darling horse, DJ. Like most horses – wait a minute, like me, too – he is a creature of habit. 9 am: I whistle “meal time,” and he neighs “Good, I’m starved!” After breakfast, it’s out to the fields to Kaffee Klatch with the neighboring horses. Then – yikes, 11 am! – time to come in for “elevenses” and a drink. And since the water tank is right by the shelter, well, a little nap is a good idea in the heat of the day/cold of the morning. Then, 1 pm, time for a little something out in the field. By 6 pm he’s watching for my truck to come home, listening for the whistle, ready to neigh for dinner and literally run in: hay and crunchies. And every time he goes through his routine, he walks/runs along the same little pathways he’s created in the middle of the field. You can see them.

That’s his life. It’s a good one. It’s always the same.

Until it’s not.

What makes it change?

- A fox leaps out of a clump o’ grass during his morning walk to his elevenses. Presto, he starts a new path away from that clump – forever.
- I come out one day in the early afternoon. Shoot! Riding time! He ignores my calls at first, but eventually a resigned horse wanders in from the field.
- The neighbors ride their horses around behind our house. Yoikes! He runs out to the fields, races back, snorts, throws his tail over his back – what the heck is going on over there!?!?!

And he’s ever after different.

We’re the same way. We think we’re “in charge” of change, but really we just practice our stuff trying to get better and better until “better” doesn’t cut it anymore. All of our neighbors find our secret “back way” to the highway, and it’s too crowded to use. There’s no more surprises at work. Our mate stops listening to our excited rants about new ideas – wait a minute, we have no more excited rants about new ideas.

In short: our “practice” becomes “insanity.”

We start to feel pain.

Now for DJ, “ pain” usually means “surprise.” He doesn’t like those. He likes a nice, safe, predictable world where his hay and his naps and his crunchies all appear on time, safely, and comfortably.

All of us are like that. Only each of our definitions of “on time, safely, and comfortably” is different. So each of our definitions of “pain” is different.

Contrary to our “natural” reaction, pain is a good thing. Welcome pain: it’s the catalyst for change. It will transform you out of the world of “insanity” into the world of a new practice, a new way of being comfortable in the world. Pain is not the “necessary evil” – pain is a message from our un/subconscious bodies to our conscious/emotional/mental ones. Pain says, “Don’t do that.” Pain says, “Do it differently.” Pain says, “Try something else.”

Sometimes, it takes a while for us to recognize conscious/emotional/mental pain. Because sometimes it’s not as obvious as a fox spurting out of a clump of grass. It sneaks up on us – and we say, oh that’s ok, that’s not really pain, I’m just out of sorts today, I ate a bad apple at lunch, I’m getting a cold, my back hurts, my boss is a nut… In fact, all of those things are the fox leaping out of the bushes – the beginnings of the message from our un/subconscious selves to the top of the stack: time to change.

So watch for the foxes – even the little ones. Does it mean that, the second you feel a cringe of “something’s not right,” you drop everything? Burn the house, sell the horse and move to France? (my favorite escape fantasy) Of course not. But it does mean paying attention: Hey. There’s a fox jumping out of the bushes. There’s people and horses running over there. I wonder what that’s about? I think it’s time I go check it out.

This is a meditation about pain. Pain is a message. Listen. Accept. Explore. And trust that your instincts will keep you safe in the long run.

And you can begin to “practice” something else.