We had a scare last week.
I went down to the creek early in the morning and Tashi, our kitty, followed me. It was a beautiful, crisp, pre-spring morning, and neither of us could resist the pull to the outdoors. As we left the house I had the thought, “I’m so glad that Tashi gets to be her innate cat-self and explore the outdoors.”
We take a risk letting her roam around outside, but we’ve always felt that it’s worth it. (*Note: Luckily, Tashi has never been much of a bird hunter, but she does an excellent job keeping the mouse population down.) As she walked beside me, I thought about the risks we take in every day life, and how the only way to secure safety is to never leave the house. But even that isn’t safe as isolation and lack of movement bring a different type of risk. There is simply no way to live a risk-free life in this world.
I had to go back inside to start my workday, so I left Tashi down at the creek. Having grown up on this land, she’s skilled and artful in the wild, but we still worry about her. About an hour later, I peeked out the window and saw an enormous coyote loping along our neighbor’s fence. It was the largest coyote I’ve ever seen – more wolf-sized than coyote. My heart leapt and my stomach dropped. Where was Tashi?
I called for her, searched everywhere, called to my husband, and we spent the next several hours looking for her. She was nowhere to be found. I was imagining how I was going to break the news to my boys, who have grown up with her. I felt absolutely heartsick and terrified. It seemed that she had met her end. We saw the coyote several more times crisscrossing our yards and the creek, but still no sign of kitty.
About four hours later, Tashi casually came walking back up to the house. We have no idea where she had been – most likely she had been hiding somewhere – but she sauntered up without a care in the world. My husband and I rejoiced, and thanked the sweet gods of animals for protecting her.
Life is a Risk
I’m sharing this story to emphasize the risks we take in loving, and how tempting it is to keep our worlds small with the false assumption that we can prevent the risk of loss. One way or another, risk finds us, for it’s an inherent part of life on this planet.
In our longing to stay safe, it’s easy to forget that with every risk taken, we widen our capacity to embrace life to the fullest.
I think about the risk we took when we allowed our son to fly gilders when he was fourteen, and the immense benefit that came from it. It was through flying the he was able to overcome he lifelong fear of death, which then allowed him to pursue his dreams of becoming a naval aviator, and eventually an astronaut.
I think about the risk we took in moving to Colorado nearly eighteen years ago, leaving behind everything and everyone familiar in search of a place where our souls could breathe.
I think of the risks we take every day in allowing ourselves to love and be loved: how truly terrifying it can feel, especially when you have any kind of trauma history, to let someone into the deepest layers of your heart knowing that loss and hurt are possible.
I think about the risks we take when we travel, leaving behind the stability of home, and how our worlds are widened when we experience other parts of the country and world.
Is There a Way to Stay Safe?
The anxious-sensitive personality type tends to have one topmost need: to stay safe. With a heightened awareness of the risks inherent to life, this personality type has been honed over thousands of years to scan the horizon looking for danger. In the absence of physical danger, we’ll look for emotional danger or risk: Is it safe to love my partner? Are my kids healthy? Am I healthy? We scan and ruminate endlessly, searching for the tiniest clue for danger so that we can slam shut the doors of hearts and bypass the risk of living.
It doesn’t work, of course; there is simply no way to avoid risk and stay safe. What then? We do enough of our emotional and spiritual work to create a foundation of inner safety and outer trust so that we can tolerate the risk of loss inherent to life. That sentence was easy to write; it’s incredibly difficult to live out. But there’s no other way. We either play safe and small, or we step further into life’s adventures and trust, trust, trust that we will be able to meet whatever happens.
What kinds of risks have you taken lately and how have they enlarged and enlivened your world?
