I was 18. It was early spring, with just a little snow left on the ground. I was in a forest, taking a walk, while a deep fog was emerging from the ground itself, covering everything, turning the world gray, indistinct. Hazy. And suddenly, ten feet or so away, the head of a deer appeared before me as if it had been born from the fog itself; as if a brand-new dimension of the ordinary had shown itself. It was startling. Unexpected. It stared at me, and I stood there with it, rooted to the spot. Not one thought in my mind. The whole universe had become just us, just this.
Last fall, another encounter with a deer. I was once again on a walk, this time it was fall, in the late afternoon, on our rural road, and I saw a deer crossing about 300 feet ahead of me. I continued walking and when I got closer, I noticed it was a stag, with maybe a 2-year growth of horns. Instead of running off, like deer usually do, it stopped, turned, and walked at a strong pace toward me. I stopped. He stopped and looked right at me.
I wondered if he was confused and mistook me for another deer, or if he was sick. Was he preparing to approach further to see what I was, or to attack? I got my cellphone out and took a quick photo. Only then did he run off.
What was the message here, if anything? How do I understand this? Surely, one way is to read about and carefully observe deer behavior and figure out why deer act as they do. But each deer, not that unlike each human, is similar to but different from any other. Unique.
After he ran off, I just took a breath and took time to enjoy what had happened. A wild animal had studied me as I had studied it. It was a beautiful moment, a gift of nature.
How we understand an event or sensory signal is at least as important as the initial stimuli we’ve experienced. I’ve talked about this in blogs about dealing with pain. If we interpret chest pain as a heart attack, it becomes crazily more intense than if we interpret it as indigestion.
The principle is the same in relating with other people. How we respond to comments from a teacher or friend, an event in the news or a statement of a politician, can be more consequential in our lives than what was originally said or done. Despite all the ugliness and fear, we don’t want to become ugly and always afraid. Despite all those who aim to make us feel small, isolated, and powerless we want to look at life as broadly and honestly as possible. What we see is obviously influenced both by what we look at and the attitude, or mindset we bring to it.
And how we interpret an event can determine how much we inhabit that moment of our lives. We evaluate stimuli, occurrences in terms of approach-avoid. Helpful-harmful. Pleasurable-unpleasurable. Good-bad⎼ or neutral. This is built into us. And we can subject ourselves to this same propensity, of looking for threats, dangers, mistakes before we see anything else.
Psychologists and others say we humans have a “negativity bias.” Dr. Julie Haizlip, a clinical professor at the University of Virginia School of Nursing, said, “humans are more attentive to and are more influenced by the negative aspects of their environment than the positive.” If we’re ultrasensitive to what might hurt us, we’ll be better prepared to prevent it. It’s almost as if the mind creates the negative response to fend off something even worse.
This bias, however, can interfere with clear thinking and perception. It can make us more, not less, susceptible to hurt, self-generated hurt. We can leave too much of life unlived. And we feel bad about this; we can feel regret, often without consciously realizing it. The unlived can return to haunt us.
So much nowadays is unclear, hazy, with an added layer of malignant threat. It’s almost unbelievably difficult to face. So, to help us, to help me live through this difficult time, maybe we need to make a promise to ourselves⎼ to recognize it’s sometimes necessary to withdraw and take a break. But attacking ourselves, diminishing our abilities⎼ never.
Instead, we might look at events in as broad and comprehensive a perspective as we can. And as compassionately; compassion is not the same as empathy or sympathy. It’s a readiness to not only allow ourselves to notice the suffering of others, and ourselves, but to act to relieve it. It helps us better understand our lives and the world we live in. And right now, we all need such care and understanding.
After meeting the deer in the forest, I started to watch what might be born from fog. I had learned an early lesson about what can emerge from something indistinct, unclear, hazy. I knew better about the importance of not letting the unknown, or fear constrict my life so much that moments go unlived and return to haunt me. Who wants to live like a house haunted?
Our society today is run by too many haunted by fear, selfishness, blaming of others, and an unwillingness to see. This leads to a nation ruled by ignorance, or an unwillingness to look and see, a selfishness, fear, and a readiness to blame others instead of looking at oneself. The rest of us must do our best to be different.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock
