Red Room Where the Writers Are

The day before yesterday I received a call from my wife. She and our daughter Debi saw a baby Opossum under the deck and marvelled at how cute is was. By marvelling I mean squealing with delight.

The odd thing about the situation is: Little Honey, aka Clarice, aka the white and orange cat that we found as a kitten two blocks away was standing near it.

Yesterday my wife was talking to me on the phone while walking around outside and she found the baby Opossum laying in the yard, nearly dead with flies buzzing around it.

We're not one hundred percent sure what happened, but here's a hypothesis:

For some reason the critter's Mom and Dad aren't in the picture. Little honey found the critter and decided it was enough like a rat to be a perfect play thing. So she played with it for a few days, eventually it succumbed to what ever sort of play Little Honey was doing and that's when Krista found it.

Krista called animal control and they took it to a rescue shelter. Krista used to work in a rescue shelter, she doesn't think the Opossum going to make it.

I've talked about this subject before. This is particularly heart wrenching for Krista because she loves animals so much. She really cares and she really hates to see things suffer. Clearly, for what ever reason (even supposing Little Honey is innocent), this little critter suffered.

Assuming the worst (which is highly likely), Little Honey tortured that animal nearly to death for the fun of it. Okay, its not fun, its instinct, but ... you know what I mean.

We can't be upset with Little Honey because its her nature to be this way. We can't be upset with ourselves because it was out of our control. Our minds have a tendency to blame and it would be easy to resent Little Honey or even perhaps resent life itself for its apparent cruelty, but as the serenity prayer says: we really can't do more than we can do.

So, as if to reiterate what life has taught me before, life again says to me: you must accept nature for what it is. That applies to all people as well as Little Honey and cute pink eared little critters. People can't help what they are. Just like Little Honey can't help what she is.

The only difference between Little Honey and humanity, is that humanity thinks it can control its nature. In fact that belief is delusional. Its true we can override our nature, but we can't change it. It always was, it is now and it will always be.

When we override our nature we cause inner conflict and that conflict manifests as stress and disease. I'm not saying we should stop overriding our nature, if we did, we'd have chaos. I'm saying that we have to accept that there is conflict when we attempt to override our nature.

It is the inner conflict of humanity, caused by our desire to control our natures, that enables us to become free of that nature. We do not gain control of it. We do not change it. We simply become fully conscious of it and rise above it. Instead of forcing the desired behaviour and overriding human nature, we actually evolve to a point where the nature of our minds becomes irrelevant. We have the inborn reactions, but they do not affect us.

Its debatable whether we are actually changed by consciousness in this process. From the outside looking in we are very different, because we no longer react to our environment according to our nature. But from the inside looking out, the reaction tendency is still there, but it is swallowed by consciousness and never manifests. We realize our nature in the moment and that erases its effect on reality.

God bless the little critter.

God bless Little Honey.

God bless Krista and Debi.

What wonderful lessons life teaches if we listen.