creation

Want to Know How to Get at Life's Goodies?

Ask a squirrel — they’ve got it sussed

Experiencing the extremes of life after loss is bringing me all kinds of goodies, often in ways unexpected. In moments where grief overwhelms me, these fragments of goodness find me. They soothe me back into alignment.

A lesson I’ve learned recently from three squirrel kits brings steadiness to my yearning for joy.

Here’s how…

Squirrels are expert in going for the goodies… and getting them!

Picture the scene. A metal bird feeder — a tall pole, with a shallow basket 2/3 of the way up. A plastic, cylindrical seed dispenser, designed for small birds only, hangs from an arm at the top of the pole. The base of the dispenser is a good foot from the basket, roughly at the same height…

I’m sure you can imagine what comes next.

Facing Our Reality Might Seem Sensible - But it Stops Us Imagining a Better One

No wonder we feel so stuck!

There’s a time for acknowledging current reality, for sure. But what happens when we focus on a reality we don’t like and don’t know how to resolve?

Every system in our world is geared towards magnifying the problem.

We obsess over it.

We tell and retell the story of it.

It becomes all-consuming in our efforts to resolve it.

We’re scolded if we don’t ‘face reality’. We’re branded ‘Pollyanna’ with eye-rolling and exasperation if we dare to defy the advice of those rooted in problem-focused thinking.

The problem soon becomes huge in our experience. Our power diminishes as we try taking action to fix the ugly issue, or distance ourselves from it — the thorn in our side.

How often do we act and fail, only to set ourselves up for more of the same misery, or worse?

Or perhaps we become utterly hopeless like dogs so repeatedly punished that they no longer attempt to leave their cage, even when the door is left wide open…

And then, after a life time of disempowerment, of ‘knowing’ our innate futility, loss finds us, in some major form. Loss of a loved one, loss of health or wealth, loss of direction, loss of anima.

We find ourselves in a world gone grey. A world without meaning, without sweetness, a world where problems are the only reality and we’re too worn down to face them.

If we have lost our power to imagine, we have nothing to bring to a landscape of loss.