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It is choice and free will - our ability to create ourselves
out of our desires - which often underscores the complexity
of being human, of being alive. We can conceive in our
minds the full blossoming rose - wine red with petals of silk -
and we are astonished by the beauty arriving from one seed.
Or the squirrel, the star of the Affirmative Note below,
who knows the pure pleasure of being a squirrel and
offers us a simple nut of wisdom.
I wrote this note below for Ann on a sleepy Sunday morning,
looking out at the gray sky, the snow on the lawn, the oak tree
outside of our sunroom, watching a squirrel navigate a nut
along a long limb and marveling at the simplicity and
the complexity of existence. Almost like a Zen master,
I jotted down the following note without explanation,
leaving the mystery of its meaning to the reader.
THE SQUIRREL
Through the sunroom window
I see a squirrel maneuver
the limb of the tree –
how wondrous –
the squirrel being exactly
what the squirrel should be –
a squirrel.
How perfect the life of a squirrel –
never desiring to be anything else
but a squirrel and succeeding.
As you can see, the note is shorter in length than my
usual Affirmative Thought notes, which are usually
first written for Ann before I publish them on the blog.
When I presented Ann with the note later that morning
with her first tea of the day, she read it and gave me a
half smile and a casual thanks as she tossed it gently
on the dresser. She turned and said, “I guess you didn’t
have much to say? I said, “perhaps more than is apparent."
Half joking I said – “I just receive the messages from God,
I don’t take responsibility for the length or content”.
Ann gave me a half laugh.
Almost two weeks later I am having dinner with Ann
at a local Italian restaurant, the kind of place we all
go to get a quick meal close to home, and Ann is talking
about work and she says, “you know, I have decided to be
a squirrel - I am no longer going to try to be a rabbit or
a dog but just the squirrel I was made to be”. I almost
dropped my fork full of pasta, thoroughly surprised
the squirrel had surfaced again.
Ann admitted that when I gave her the Squirrel note she
had dismissed it, thinking that I was just tired or did not
feel like writing that morning, but the image of the contented
squirrel kept appearing in her mind. As time went on, she
decided the squirrel was being what the squirrel was meant
to be - fully authentic, and that was why the squirrel was so
happy and succeeded.
Ann said she then decided she was going to live her
life asking a simple question – “I am a squirrel,
am I trying I trying to be something else by doing this?
Am I trying to be the rabbit someone would like me to be?
Ann said she had decided to commit herself to always
be just a squirrel? For Ann the squirrel had become
a symbol of the authentic Ann - the Ann she was meant to be.
In the end, I also learned a great deal from Ann and
the squirrel. I do believe in our souls – we are born with a
divine spiritual instinct along with our genetic predilections.
When we know this soul – this divine purpose - our
authentic purposeful life will shine – we will discover the
“Squirrel” in our hearts. All we then need to do is ask Ann’s
simple question – are we being true to the squirrel we were
meant to be?
WITH LOVE, G.