Dear Friend,
Two dogs make a lot more mess than one. There tends to be more barking too. Double the amount of poo to pick up.
Strength the Labrador is fifteen. He can only manage a short trip to the local park before he’s tuckered out. Zara could run all day. She lived wild in Romania and so learned to catch her own food. Field mice and rats.
It was pretty shocking the first time Chiara and me witnessed her dispatching a field mouse. Two crunches and the poor creature’s tail disappearing like a snake down a hole. The strength momentarily leaving our bodies, we watched appalled. I hoped the mouse didn’t have a nest of babies waiting for their return.
She’s no need to hunt anymore, it’s an automatic response. Something she delights in.
The ways we learned to fit in when we were tiny kids. Feeling the energy of the adults around us, watching them. When you step out of line you find out about it. When you’re really little and your caregivers are out of line, you just adapt to it.
You make yourself wrong. To make the gods wrong is way too threatening. We simply don’t have the perspective for it. We’re dependant.
The strategies that we came up with when we were tiny get wired in. They become shortcuts in our brains. We don’t know we have shortcuts, until they no longer work.
Putting the needs of family, friends, acquaintances before our own, some of us hope that someone else will return the favour. But they don’t.
I’ve written about this idea before, because it comes up over and over again. The shortcuts are unconscious, the way we become conscious of them is to go through painful, frustrating experiences. Bumping and banging and scraping against unwanted life events.
That voice in your head, when it’s mean and harsh and attacking. Is a liar.
A short cut that has outlived its use.
The shortcut will most likely be the first response, but it doesn’t have to be the one you take seriously anymore. You’re nervous system will react, if your early childhood conditions were extreme, the responses in your nervous system will be more pronounced.
Patterns.
Look for them. Notice them.
I was bullied as a kid for my looks. My first response to this day is to assume at best I’m funny looking and more often plug ugly. I tense up when someone points a camera at me.
Sometimes a photo gets taken and I’m relaxed or focused on something else. I’m aware some readers don’t know what I look like, so here’s a picture Chiara took a few weeks ago in the kitchen.
I like the way this guy looks.
That doesn’t stop the liar in my mind from attacking. The false self, we all have to deal with.
I have my mother’s eyes.
I take comfort in that.
This physical form is temporary.
What it houses is eternity.
We’re living through strange times. Surface appearances predominate in cultures that shun the depths.
One of the things I like about writing on substack is the community of people diving deep is strong.
Five of my favourites are
.If you have lazy day and you’re curling up with a good read you’ll find something that lets you know you’re not alone.
Both dogs are going home today.
Thinking about them leaving, I miss them. Even though their still here sleeping at my feet. That’s the mind for you, skipping ahead, creating dramas.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey
Thanks Alan. Likewise. An honour and a pleasure to connect with you like this. 💚
I am very honoured to be part of your community on Substack, Mike! Thank you. Your story resonates strongly with me, the bullying when young, the sense of a 'false self', the work one engages in managing 'automatic responses'. Keep on writing and processing! I see you're off to Italy. Enjoy!