Survival of the Fittest

Dearest Goddesses,

I’m so grateful for this week’s goddess – Eostre/Growth. I am ready!!! I am coming out of this period of stagnation and lethargy and I am so ready to make things happen.

I’ve read that it takes 3 days to get over food addictions and I woke up for my fourth day without sugar, bread or caffeine bright eyed! Not quite bushy tailed yet since I’m having trouble figuring out what I want to focus my energy on. I like to use the term “channel your energy” – especially with John and I really need to be open to some clarity in finding my direction (and not just follow the whim of the day).

I thought I’d share an observation with you this morning and hope for your feedback. I’ve been living in a beautiful house in a fairly undesirable area of San Jose. I’m really working on attracting a nice house with a beautiful backyard where my dogs can come and go freely. Now, I need to take them out for walks several times a day. And because of my country gal (who won’t go to the bathroom on anything but grass) and I’ve sort of got slim pickins in the grass department. So anyway – my old dog Wilma is about 13 years old and in tough shape. She is slow and hobbles – but loves going out for the walks. The other two want to get “there” as fast as they can (sounds like me!) and so Wilma trails behind us, sometimes at quite a distance. Well over the 5 months we’ve lived here, people are constantly slapping Wilma and a little girl actually poured soda on her head! I mean, this is a poor old dog!

So this morning, John and I were walking and sure enough a homeless man slapped Wilma on the butt. John immediately got in his face (she’s our girl!) and as John walked away, the man didn’t look after him with a sense of shame or upset but like he couldn’t believe John had the audacity to call him out over a “dog”. I was angry, I said – why, why would they put their hands on her? And he said something interesting – well, it’s survival of the fittest. People see something weak and they have to go after it. I suppose that could be why people LOVE watching the news which is filled with doom and gloom, I suppose that’s why they LOVE the gossip magazines – if we can see failure in someone else – somehow it makes us feel better? And yet, there’s the flipside – people who go out of their way to protect the weak and while there are the jerks who put their hands on Wilma or pour soda on her head, there are also the people I’ve noticed who see an old dog walking and say – pobresita, esta gorda (fat) and chat me up about the poor, old, fat dog.

In the book A Complaint Free World, William Bowen tells this story about how he lives on a curve and people tend to drive too fast and one day a man in a pickup hit his dog and just kept on driving. He was so angry at this man that he immediately got in his car and followed him, convinced that when he saw him he would kill the man. He followed him all the way to his house and William pulled into the driveway, got out of the car and said “you hit my dog!” And the man replied, “yeah, so – what are you going to do about it?” He was so floored by this man’s reaction, his lack of remorse and he rethought the idea of getting into a fist fight and headed back to his house to bring his dog to the vet and be with his family. He struggled and struggled for days with the reaction of this man and finally realized that this man must be in so much pain not to be able to feel remorse for a dead dog. Suddenly, he was filled with compassion for this man and wished him well.

Food for thought…

Love,
Patty