Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Giraffes & Training: Together?

What do you do when you find yourself cross eyed for a cupcake and so blind to the sugar that your loyalty is on yourself, and the sugar, more than on the supplier?

Just as with humans, animal relationships are the same. It's all a philosophy of looking at souls. It's
not about black skin or white skin, it's not about a dog or a giraffe. Building a relationship to a point of loyalty and trust takes a long time, it takes a lot of deposits into a trust account. Only once you have that history can your relationship handle withdrawals and a few dips in the market. Anything, over time, can fade away, and sometimes it will break without a warning. At least not a warning that is immediately identifiable, but there is no reaction without an action.

Whether you are training an animal to allow you to stick a needle in them, or you are creating a foundation of trust and love with a close friend, if you don't allow them choice and control, or options to participate willingly, there is an inevitable end where the behavior or the relationship will break. With time you can bring it back, until you can't anymore. You never know when that point is until you've reached it, but hopefully with an enlightened point of view, and a willingness to admit fault and grow, with conscious effort to be better, the chances of that are dramatically decreased. Pez-feeding a relationship with cupcakes, crackers, words, or gestures can only sustain it for so long. Allow them the option to choose to be with you; help them fall in "love" and genuinely enjoy your company, so that when the inevitable down slopes of life occur, they know that spending that time with you will make it better.

It's natural to crave a level of intimacy in our relationships that fills our desire to be needed and wanted. Whether we are moving onto a new career, or starting a life with a new family, or even just starting a new relationship with a new soul, we all want to feel "helpful". Sometimes that helpful is to bring an animal comfort and joy when they are around us or see us. Sometimes it's to help a close friend through a tough time, or even an easy time, but simply being there to curse, or listen, or have a tissue or a beer fulfills our sense of duty and obligation.  When someone leaves you unexpectedly, it makes you want to crawl into the hole they left behind and stop trying.

But you can't. Well, you can, and your soul simply won't grow, and for some people that's ok. After enough cycles, we build resilience and a little voice inside drives us to keep going, it feeds us keep going signals even when we have no faith in hope, because we know, that it's ok. We know that it's for a reason and on levels we don't even consciously recognize, there is a comfort in that. It isn't hope that drives us at that point, it's a resilience built from lifetimes of fighting and pushing and growing to where we are now. And for those around us 'old souls' that struggle and fall down and need a hand, we feel obligated to be there for them, sometimes even when all we want is to leave the world behind, because it's the right thing to do.

It may not be the end of the world, but pain is perceived differently by everyone. Who knows why one cryptorchid moose will allow a hand in places that cause grown men to blush, but another won't approach a human they've known for years? One heartbreak might bring a grown man to his knees, whereas a thousand broken hearts leaves a woman standing stronger and unflinching. Until the soul she never thought she'd lose, the one she felt more akin with than her own even, becomes like a will-o-wisp and leaves a tangibly empty hole that brings a pain into her life that infiltrates everything. No matter the pain or anger caused by other fairly substantial events, the repeated phrase is "I think you're more upset about 'her'. Someone who has nothing to do with this event directly." And each time, there is zero denial and 100% acceptance of this statement.
Ultimately we are all stronger than we think. It takes a strong crash to awaken us to it sometimes, or a needle poke to realize where our loyalty is. Is it with the supplier of the cupcake, or have we been cross eyed this entire time? Where do we stand now?

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