This is a metaphor. And it’s not.
I travel a lot, typically a couple weeks a month. Sometimes I’ll think I’m going for a week and it ends up being 3.
So, needless to say, I don’t have many constraining commitments on the home front, beyond home itself. I don’t leave any “thing” I really value, typically. I take the few items of that nature with me.
But when it comes to living beings, I haven’t had too many worries with leaving them behind (I mean, I know my family and close friends will always be there for me regardless – and they live far away anyway). Until lately.
After a couple years living by myself in one place – a seeming eternity for me (the one place thing, not being soltero) – I have started getting the urge for some other living energy around the place. People come and go all the time, but…something more permanent, a presence.
Yeah, the Sloth in the tree is pretty consistent. But it’s a bad idea to pet a sloth. Plus you have to do it in slow motion.
And the neighbor’s dogs, well, they are always here. But they’re not mine, you know? It’s like that coworker you share all your problems with – yeah, they’re always there for you during those times of day, but…they’re still someone else’s wife or husband, you know? They don’t sleep over. And if they do, well, you know they’re still going to go home to eat in the morning.
Lord knows I’m not feeding the neighbor’s dogs. Although I’m thrilled to take them for runs and let them hang out and protect the place.
Anyway, I thought about getting a dog, once. I fell in love with a dog that wasn’t a puppy, whose owners lived in the US. So the dog lived in a compound with great people and other dogs. But it was kind of ownerless. Which, for this post, is very ironic.
We hit it off, and whenever I’d go visit we’d hang out some. I really liked him, he was a cool dog. I asked if I could take him home with me. The owners said no, leave him there.
Ok. It was for the best anyway, as I travel too much for a dog, really. It wouldn’t be fair to the little guy.
So I thought, ok, how about cats. I don’t like cats, but if they’re outdoor cats, and they learn to be self sufficient, and even more, if there are two of them, they can play with each other and have a blast and be stuck-up snobs but still, they’ll be around and it’s good energy. I’ll like them if they add good energy and do something useful. The ancient Pharaoh’s kept them around, so I guess that means they’re good enough for me.
(This is all the more tragic considering there was a 10 inch rat swimming in my pool this morning that the gardener fished out, wet and shaking and peeing itself for fright. But I’m skipping ahead.)
So I adopted two kittens. I’m sure you’d like to see them, but loading pics I haven’t edited is too much time commitment, and while I love this blog, I don’t love it enough for that kind of commitment. Ha.
[Ok, 6 months or so later I’m uploading a couple pics, since I added a post-script to this blog. Because of the incredible value I now especially take from this lesson, they deserve a memorial.]
AlephOne was beautiful, an ISFP brain type. Looked like a silver tiger, coolest markings I have ever seen on a cat. Hmm, yeah, wow. Just a beautiful, muy tranquilo animal.
ZedThe other one thought he was a tiger, he thought he was a badass, but in reality he was just your normal dorky-looking tabbycat. I couldn’t say no to an ESTP cat though! Talk about boundless energy haha. So they both came home with me. They were happy.
I really loved them, they were awesome. But they were really young…they demanded a LOT of attention, and just plain love. It was like they were freaking puppies or something! Following me around crying for me to pet them, following the neighbors home, always wanting affection.
Then I left on a trip. Paid someone to watch the place, take care of the kittens, live there. A couple someone’s.
But during the day they were working, etc. So the kittens would go hang out with the neighbor dogs. Eventually, that led to them canvassing the neighborhood, out looking for tourist love.
And according to everyone in the area, the workers and vacationers and people I’d paid, they all said the day before I got home the kittens took off. Never came back. Disappeared. I guess they’d waited long enough, and I hadn’t returned, soo…they were out.
It was a torrential downpour when I got home but I went looking for them anyway. A little jungle rainstorm wasn’t going to deter me, I was a strong man, and they were just tiny little kittens! I felt so bad for them, I just had to find them.
And I felt vindicated for my 3 week absence, because now I was showing so much love traipsing around the jungle in the pouring rain, looking for their lost little pathetic selves.
I imagined their soggy faces, mewing plaintively, quivering under a big leaf somewhere. I later imagined – after a couple days when they didn’t turn up – that they’d been violently eaten by something, you name it: jungle snake, jungle cat, jungle monkey. Who knew.
But this isn’t just about kittens. It’s about love. It just happens to be the perfect metaphor.
First, let me say I think the kittens survived – somehow they were either picked up or they managed to avoid 3km worth of mangy, hungry, angry dogs (not to mention the jungle critters) and walked all the way to a little town of about 100 people. I saw the beautiful one a couple days ago when I was dropping someone off at her house. She said it belonged to the lady next door, but…
My gardener told me today that the same lady had tried to give it to him, saying it had wandered in. He had thought it was mine. I think so too, but how did the wimpy one survive and the ESTP studmo not make it? Or is he just busy with some neighbor kitties, if you know what I mean. That would seem fitting. That’s my boy! Haha.
I’ll likely never know – it’s done and over with. They either have happy, loving homes now or if I mistakenly identified the one, then they are possibly returned to the dust from whence they came.
Anyway, here’s the point, and apply it how you will. Sadly, I know how I am applying it, and the not-so-funny thing is I knew this was the lesson before, during, and now after. It’s amazing how the older one gets and the more one observes, the more one understands the meta-happenings of life, as they are happening.
But some train wrecks aren’t meant to be changed or stopped. Some of them you just have to watch coming, watch happen, and then pick up the pieces afterwards. Or simply walk away.
When you love something, someone – you and only you can take care of it. You, and only you, can truly take that responsibility.
Nobody else is going to take care of what you love the way you would. Right, that’s not news to all you smart people (as anyone who has lent their car to a friend will attest).
But with things, for me at least it’s like, whatever. I lent my neighbor my motorcycle, he broke it. So it’s getting fixed. Not the end of the world.
But motorcycles can’t up and ride themselves away into the sunset. And if someone steals it and rides into the sunset (well, here they’d hit the ocean pretty quick haha), there’s methods to recoup it.
I guess even with animals, you can get them back, maybe. But not always – animals know where their “home” is. And even if you remove them, many times they’ll find their way back.
It’s their choice. The solution for many people is to remove the animal’s choice with a cage. I hate cages.
You can’t put people in cages. People are free, as they should be. Free to make choices.
No one else is going to care about the things you love the way you do. And if the entities you love are equipped with the ability to choose, know that eventually, they will use that ability. No matter how old or young, how rich or poor.
They will choose.
And sometimes those choices are mind-numbingly irrational, illogical, and ill-thought out (to you).
Sometimes, they’re as shortsighted as trading away the winning Megabucks ticket for a can of warm Miller Lite.
I don’t have all the answers as to why people do what they do, in any given moment. I can only surmise. Many times I’m right, many times I’m making accurate observations for the moment but am completely off base in the big-picture, and sometimes I’m just totally wrong.
But I do know this: if you love something, or someone, you have to take care of it, take care of them.
No living entity likes to feel abandoned, whether it’s a rational feeling or not. No matter what you tell them, no matter what you give them, no matter what you have the butler cook up for them in your name (and absence), there is much to be said for – quite simply – personally given love.
Without it, choosers are left to draw conclusions out of the thin air you’ve left behind in your stead. Right or wrong, those conclusions begin to form words, paragraphs, volumes.
Eventually, they lead to a choice.
Especially if there are other warm-blooded entities petitioning to fill your dusty space.
No matter what you do, you cannot alter, impact, or sway the inevitable ending to the story your left-behind space tells. You can stall it – but you cannot change it.
You cannot stop the train wreck, if that is what’s written in the void. Likewise, you cannot force-fill that cold cavity with something else warm and fuzzy, because of your own guilt for leaving them stuck with it.
Love them – in person, fully occupying the space that is yours and yours alone.
Or lose them. If not tangibly, then mentally and emotionally. But usually, completely.
Simple. Fascinating. Brutal.
No one else can love what is yours to love, in your place. It’s up to you, or say adieu…