Even though our Guru kitty, Max, is One with all of creation, there’s one thing he’d rather not be One with, thankyouverymuch.
That thing?
Loud noises.
When the evening of the Fourth of July rolls around every year, we need to close all the windows in the house and turn on the noise machines in my office, Melissa’s office, and our bedroom.
Even with all this preventative care, the Guru still gets rattled. It usually takes a few days for him to return to his normal Guru mindset.
But the other day? The other day was the Fourth of July times 100.
It was the 400th of July.
It started at 5:30 a.m. when Melissa and I were both awakened by a loud noise.
At first we couldn’t figure out what it was. Had a meteor hit the house? Was there a posse of rhinos breakdancing on our street? (Granted, we were both half asleep, so our noise assessment skills were slightly impaired.)
Then we heard another boom and we realized what it was. Or rather, I realized what it was because I grew up in the Midwest.
It was a thunderstorm. A very big, very loud thunderstorm.
You know how you see the flash of lightning and then you count the seconds between the lightening and the thunder and that tells you how many miles away the storm is?
In this case, there were 0 seconds between the thunder and the lightning.
The storm was no miles away.
Needless to say, the Guru was nowhere to be found. He usually sleeps on the bed with us all night, but the storm was grounds for immediate evacuation. We didn’t even see him leave.
Once we got up, I looked for the Guru. His usual hiding place when Loud Noises come to visit is in our upstairs closet. But he wasn’t there.
Finally, I found him downstairs in my office. He was visibly shaken. It was definitely a 400th of July situation. I tried to console him, but he wasn’t having it.
When I fed the Guru his breakfast, which he usually eats on the upstairs landing, he refused to go up there. I quickly realized that it was because he thought the thunder came from upstairs. Why would he go back to the source of such danger?
Fourth of July fireworks noises could also technically be seen (or heard) as coming from upstairs, but somehow the thunder registered differently in the Guru’s brain.
Huge crashing noises louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my life? I was upstairs when I heard it and it came from above. That $%*&^ lives upstairs and I’m never going up there again.
Finally, when it became clear that there was no way the Guru was going to eat in the Land of the Loud, I put his food bowl downstairs and he ate his breakfast there. (The Guru is usually very fussy about where he eats, but clearly concessions had to be made.)
When dinner rolled around, the Guru still wouldn’t go upstairs. So once again we fed him downstairs. We also reminded him that he was safe and that we loved him very much.
The next day was more of the same. Go upstairs to eat? No thank you. That’s where the thunder lives.
As day after day unfolded and the Guru continued to refuse to go upstairs, I thought about how his dilemma was true of humans as well.
We freaked out on a plane trip once and we’re sure it will definitely happen again if we ever set foot in another plane. So flying is now off the table.
We get hurt in a relationship and we convince ourselves that all relationships will always be like that. So we shut ourselves off.
A stimulus seems to be coming from a certain place, and so we avoid said place at all costs.
Is that grounds to beat ourselves up for being scaredy cats? (The Guru is not a fan of that phrase and would be cross with me for using it. He would prefer that I say Appropriately Cautious Cat.)
No, we do not beat ourselves up for being Cautious Cats. Like the Guru eating downstairs, we are gentle with ourselves. We ease back into the stimulus. We remind ourselves that planes, and relationships, and the big wide scary world are not the problem.
The problem lives with the thunder in our minds.
And once we recognize the problem’s location, we can begin to solve it.
We examine the things inside us that might be keeping us from trying again in the relationship arena. We find ways to manage our anxiety around flying.
We look within at the contents of our minds, and we realize that by changing what’s going on inside, we can handle whatever life throws at us from outside.
In the Guru’s case, after a few days, he was finally willing to venture back up to the Land of the Loud.
Even though something very scary happened, and even though the scary place had to be avoided for a while, the thunder in his mind finally quieted down enough that he was willing to try again.
Our very brave boy reminded us that it’s okay to be afraid.
And it’s okay to be gentle with yourself as you slowly but surely tiptoe back into the world again.
What about you? How do you handle big scary things? Share your comments below!
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