Keeping the Sacred Flame

As humans, we long for connection.  Sometimes we connect with other people.  Sometimes we connect with animals.  When one of those animals is our pet, the connection is deeper and stronger.

Our pets are part of our family, part of our lives.  We love them, and it hurts when we lose them.  Our hearts are broad enough for many loves, but the more we love, the more we may lose what it is that we love.

That doesn’t mean we should stop loving.  Our pets are part of our lives, and having them enriches us.  But that doesn’t make loving them easy.  And it doesn’t make losing them easy, either.  Love is a constant process of letting go and losing as much as it is taking hold and grasping.

Love your pets.  Love those that share their lives with you.  And when it comes time?  Let them go, and know they go back to the Universe.  We never owned them.  We just had them to love and care for for a time.

Questions:
Do you have pets?  Why or why not?
What does it mean to love something you know will live a far shorter life than you?
How can we balance love with the realities of loss?

Jealousy is another emotion that’s often considered “dark”.  We’re supposed to be jealous only when it’s culturally appropriate, and even then, as little as possible.

But what is appropriate, and what isn’t?  It isn’t as simple as saying that one can never be jealous.  Emotions can be managed, but not by lying about them.  It’s a natural reaction to be irritated when something we want to keep to ourselves is shared or threatened to be shared.

The real question is, over what things do we have the right to control them?  It is a natural feeling for a mother to feel jealous when her child reaches for someone else, but most people agree that children exploring and having more people to care for them is a good thing.  That doesn’t change the emotion.  What’s threatened, or feels threatened, is that exclusive bond.

A more “acceptable” jealousy is that of one’s relationship partner.  Even then, though, there needs to be reason and care.  The ground rules need to be set to begin with.  Then, as long as things are happening inside those rules, jealousy is something that needs to be examined closely.  Are you being reasonable?  Are you trying to take something you have no right to?  We cannot own other people.  All we can control is our own actions – and if the other person’s actions seem to cross our boundaries, we need to leave.

It is reasonable to want to hold things to yourself.  But it isn’t always reasonable to act on it.  Just because we are jealous, that is not a call to action.  Just because we want to control someone doesn’t mean we should.  There needs to be care and reason implemented in how we respond to our emotions, and jealousy is one we must be most careful with.  Because we cannot control other people.  We can only control ourselves.

Questions:
What situations make you jealous?  How do you respond?
How do you feel when other people are jealous of you?
When do you think jealousy is justified?  When isn’t it?  Why?

Bumps in the night.  The rattling of a tree branch against the window.  We all know the fears, great and small, that keep us awake when we should be sleeping and distracted when we mean to concentrate.

What does it mean to fear?  Fear is usually seen as a bad thing, but we also crave it.  We find terrifying stories to tell each other, terrifying things to do.  Things that we can fear and conquer, leaving us the victor.

But not all fears are conquerable.  We can survive the roller coaster and walk out of the horror movie, but life itself doesn’t have credits where everyone gets up at the end, and it doesn’t ride along a predictable track where you get off the coaster when you’re done.  It just keeps going.  And fears that are perfectly handleable on their own can grow larger and larger until they eat you whole.

So what do we do?  It is easy to say to simply not fear.  But it’s unrealistic.  Fear is a native sense of danger-awareness.  To cripple that feeling would be dangerous.  So when we have fear, what do we do about it?

We need to accept our fears.  They make us human and show us our limitations.  They are not the enemy – they point to the enemy.  When our fears have no basis, then we must work to remove our fear.  But when fear has a reasonable basis, the thing to attack is what is causing the fear, not the fear itself.  To remove the danger system because it is functioning is counterproductive, after all.

Fear isn’t a bad thing.  It’s a warning.  What we need to do is face what it is that we fear and decide if it’s a reasonable fear or not.

And if it’s reasonable?  Fix the problem.  And if you can’t do that, if it’s reasonable – run!

Questions:
What kinds of things do you fear?  Why?
When is fear reasonable?  When isn’t it?
Why is fear a necessity of life?