The Thirsty Tiger
Survival means remembering what you love.
In December’s dark dream, when the world felt so emptied, I wrote to myself in my journal, “Focus on what you love.”
I wondered what I meant by that.
Focus on what you love: Take care of your beloveds. Focus on what you love: Appreciate art instead of doomscrolling. Focus on what you love: Bring yourself out of your rage
Focusing on what you love is a choice that’s different and deeper than just enjoying the smallest things, but the smallest things can point the way. I love my dharma reading group and how the trees dance outside my window during a storm and the shared stories of community circles.
I recently had a dream that featured a thirsty tiger. I was responsible for the tiger. I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to give her water. She was so thirsty. But she was, after all, a tiger. It was risky to approach her too closely.
What you love is scary. Why? It throws you off-kilter and makes you vulnerable. You’re revealing something true about you. Maybe you’d rather just go through the motions, relaxing into the obvious soul-deadening option. But love won’t leave you alone.
Love asks, what else is there? Who is whispering to me? What do I yearn for? Is there a clear path, or only a firefly blinking on and off in the deep woods?
This goes beyond expectations of what you should do, and asks for more. What will you take a risk for? Your dear community? Family, friends? Your artistic vision? If discipline means remembering what you want, survival means remembering what you love.
Sometimes you have to fight yourself to go toward what you love because it asks so much of you. There’s always a question, and not always an answer.
I learned from a conversation with a neighbor that I had been living as it were in a fool’s paragraph…
On a rainy day, this member of the real world gave me a ride home. I invited him in for a minute and somehow all hell broke loose.
Politely, he asked me about my writing. Foolishly, not dreaming I was about to set my own world tumbling down around my ears, I said I hated to write. I said I would rather do anything else. He was amazed. He said, “That’s like a guy who works in a factory all day and hates it.” Then I was amazed, for so it was. It was just like that. Why did I do it? I had never inquired. How had I let it creep up on me?
…I rallied and mustered and said that the idea was to learn things; that you learn a thing and then as a matter of course you learn the next thing, and the next thing… As I spoke he nodded precisely in the way that one nods at the deranged. “… And then,” I finished brightly, “you die!” - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Sometimes all you need to do is put yourself in position to see everyday occurrences like the rhythm of walkers’ legs silhouetted in afternoon light.
Great post. I love this line especially: Focusing on what you love is a choice that’s different and deeper than just enjoying the smallest things, but the smallest things can point the way.