Where in your life are you choosing fear...
...over yourself?
I am currently cat sitting. Two lovely rescue cats. Sisters, with the same black fur and the same story. But with two completely opposite personalities and behaviours. H. is curious and active, always looking forward to meeting new people and being involved in new adventures. M. is quite reserved and staid, risk-averse and easily scared by the unknown.
Yesterday they spent all day in the garden and, at some point, H. came back to have her dinner (extremely punctual!). After an hour still there was no sign of M. (and, trust me, she is very fond of food!). I went out and I could not find her, until I saw something moving among the pansies. M. was hiding and pretending to be a flower (a rare total-black pansy to be precise!)!
M. was absolutely terrified by the transition garden-home. She does use the cat flap, so I was expected to open the door for her. And I could sense her thinking something like: ‘Now, this stranger is going to open the door and I need to run inside as fast as possible before the door closes and I get stuck!’ Well, it took me a couple of hours to create a space safe enough to help her believe that she could do it!
M. was petrified by her vision of getting stuck with the door, so she got stuck in the garden! Looking at her looking at me I saw fear. Hers and mine. Because fear is universal, and this experience has been a great reminder of all the times in my life when I behaved like M. and let fear control my thoughts and my actions instead of choosing myself.
Where in your life are you choosing fear over yourself?
(Photo by Adél Grőber on Unsplash)