The Tiger's Eyelash

Once, long ago in Japan, there lived a young woman, Michi, who had a husband gone off to the war. Before he’d left, they had done many things together: walking, cooking, singing, writing and drawing. They had enjoyed each other’s company, and the young husband was very kind and indulgent to his beautiful wife. While he was gone during the war, she worried about him and longed for his company.

The day finally came when her husband, Mamoru, returned home. Michi had prepared Mamoru’s favorite foods. She seated him at the dining table, and brought out his food with delicate gentleness and honor. She sat with her husband, waiting for him to eat. Mamoru stared at the table for a moment, eyes clouded with confusion, then a growl started low in his throat. His eyebrows puckered and his hands reached for the table. Before Michi knew what had happened, her husband had overturned the table and stalked outside of their small house. Michi quickly cleaned the overturned food. Her husband sat in silence on the front steps, looking into the orange twilight as the sun lowered toward the horizon.

“My husband,” Michi bowed to him, “What has happened? How has my cooking offended you?”

Momaru grunted. Michi glanced quickly at her husband, so changed. He still wore a scowl and refused to look at her. Finally, she asked, “Would you like to sing a song together?”

“I want to be left alone!” her husband roared at her. Michi stumbled back a few steps, surprised by her husband’s fury. Never before had he raised his voice to her.

“Come inside and go to bed,” she reached toward him. His hand sped toward hers faster than she realized. His blow stung her hand and unbalanced her.

“I said, leave me alone! I will sleep out here!” He turned way from her. That night Michi continued to sleep alone in her bed. Her husband had returned, but the war had taken him.

For many days, the young woman continued like this. She prepared, coaxed, sang, smiled, and tried to make her husband happy. He continued to avoid her, sleeping outside at night as he had become accustomed to during the battles. One night, she ventured outside to check on him, to shake him and perhaps see if he would like to come inside the house. It had been a mistake. When she touched his shoulder, she found herself pinned on the ground underneath him before she even knew what happened. His grimace and rage told her he wasn’t really seeing her, so she stopped struggling. Thankfully, that calmed him, and he feel back to the ground to sleep once more.

Michi went to see the village healer. “Please, sir,” she asked, “There must be some kind of potion or herb that will calm my husband’s anger and bring him back to himself again.”

The healer’s wispy white eyebrows rose on his balding forehead. He nodded, “Yes, yes, my dear. I do have a potion that can help your husband overcome his trauma, but I am out of one very important ingredient. Tiger’s eyelash.”

“Tiger’s eyelash?” the young woman inquired.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been so busy with infected cuts and bee stings lately that I haven’t had time to ascend the mountain and retrieve eyelashes from the tiger that lives near the summit.” He stopped at looked at her piercingly. “My sweet young lady, if you want to save your husband, you must gather the tiger’s eyelash for the potion.”

Michi’s breath came a little faster, and she whispered, “That’s it? I just have to bring back the eyelash and you will make the potion?”

The old healer nodded. Michi responded, “Oh, venerable sir, I would climb a thousand mountains if it would restore my husband to me.”

Michi ran home and packed a traveling bag to scale the mountain. Inside she put extra provisions and a coat. She selected thick-soled shoes so she could manage the rocky terrain. She could see Momaru sitting in the living room, staring out the front window at…nothing. She sighed, lifted her shoulders and head then walked out the door.

The mountain, Ibuki, was richly shaped and full of trees and wildlife. Michi walked through a forest of beautiful trees whose feathery white blossoms caressed her cheeks and reminded her how Momaru’s eyelashes would tickle her when they pressed their faces together. Next, she encountered a region of boulders, odd-shaped and sometimes difficult to pass between. Finally, she entered the tiger’s territory. A light snow coated the ground, and scrawny, thorned trees surrounded her. It was cold, and she put on her coat. She found a cave, one of the many dotting the mountain side. She fell asleep from weariness. In the morning, she resolved to find which cave belonged to the tiger. She pulled out some dried fish, ate it, and went to the cave opening. Just as she reached the edge, she spied a tiger walking along the ridge. “What luck!” she thought, and she blessed the ancestors for her good fortune at finding the tiger so quickly. She followed him from afar, noting the cave he entered. She crouched down and waited, and waited. She dozed. She awakened. Then, she had an idea.

Hurrying back to her pack in her cave, she withdrew some dried fish and a piece of wood. She went back to the entrance of the tiger’s cave and laid out the food.  She backed away and hid behind a fallen tree. The tiger eased its way out of its cavern lair, sniffing the air as he checked his environment. Seeing nothing else, he ate the dried fish then bounded down the mountain.  Michi walked back to her cave smiling to herself.

Michi continued to leave food for the tiger everyday. Everyday, she cut the distance between herself and the tiger until she could plainly be seen. The tiger glanced at her, but he seemed to take her as part of the environment instead of a threat.  Within a few more days, Michi was sitting next to the tiger while he are her dried fish. She attempted to speak to him.

“Please, Mr. Tiger,” she began, “I have come so far and been so patient. I need to get one of your eyelashes so I can save my husband. Please, please, would you let me have one.”

The tiger eyed her then bowed his head toward her. “You have patiently fed me this entire month so you could simply gain an eyelash. I have enjoyed your food very much, and you haven’t startled me once. I will freely give you an eyelash, and I will remember your kindness forever.”

He closed his eyes and thrust his head toward Michi. Timidly, she reached out a plucked a single eyelash from the tiger. He opened his eyes as she gazed in wonder at the long hair. Then, she jumped up and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you so much, tiger!  Thank you!”

Without waiting another second, Michi gathered her bag and ran down the mountain. The thorny trees scraped her pink skin. The boulders bruised and cut her feet in spite of the thick shoes she wore. The fronds of the small tress at the base of the mountains tickled her nose and cause her to sneeze a hundred times. Still, she kept going, onward, toward her village and the healer who would make the potion to cure Momaru.

She breathlessly dashed through the healer’s door, wielding the tiger eyelash and shouting, “I have it! I got it! It took so long, but I have the tiger’s eyelash!”

The old man caught Michi by the shoulders and slowed her down. He gently pinched the eyelash away from the girl and muttered, “Yes… yes… so you have got thetiger’s eyelash. Very good, girl, VERU good.”

He stopped in front of his fireplace. In a wink, he tossed the eyelash onto the fire, and it disappeared.

“What have you done!” gasped Michi, “I spent all that time and hurt myself so I could bring the eyelash for you to save my husband!”

Tears welled in her eyes. She pressed her hand to her chest.

“Yes, my dear one,” the healer said, “You demonstrated patience, cunning, and kindness while taming the tiger for his eyelash. You need no potion. Go home and do the same with your husband.”

I’m happy to report that Michi followed her plans exactly as she had done with the tiger and, in time, her husband returned to his kinder and gentler, if sadder and sterner, personality.

Heroics - Is That a Title for Inner Battles?

First things first! Today is my goddaughter’s 18^th birthday – Happy birthday, Hana! Welcome to adulthood… J Everyone smile today – pass that smile around. And lift a little smile, positive thought, prayer, for my sweet goddaughter. Thank you so much – I believe in your power to positively affect the world around you!

Well, I’m up extra early this morning. I’ve been up since 1:30, and I had a short time tonight dealing with some of my fears. I inadvertently triggered a situation that set my inner child running for the hills. J It’s ok, it happens. I’m learning to be patient with myself when I react out of fear instead of compassion or love. Having gone through a childhood and a handful of adult relationships that revolved around emotional sabotage (mostly unintentional on the other person’s part), I still find myself shying away from what I call blindsiding – reactions from people I wasn’t expecting. The stressor is too close to the unexpected emotional outbursts (mostly angry) I experienced as a child and an adult. Most of those outbursts left me feeling scared, angry, confused, and responsible for something I couldn’t control. I’ve posted and written a lot about courage and bravery in the face of the things that scare us. Here’s where it comes time for me to walk my talk. One of the hardest things for us to ever get over is deep emotional wounding. That fear resides with us for the rest of our lives; our daily battle becomes how to deal with the fear. The other side of us desires deeply to love, to find companionship, because we are naturally social beings. Not that we need another to complete us, but we do have a compulsion to share with others, especially the most positive and meaningful experiences in our lives. It is a difficult and terrifying task to continue to experience things alone when you’ve been so hurt you can’t bring yourself to trust another. I understand that point of view. I’ve lived that point of view, and very nearly destroyed myself in the process.

So how do we move past those fears? I’ve posted some ideas about vulnerability. Brene Brown has done some fascinating, recent research on vulnerability. Ironically, her research field stemmed from a desire to study what made people miserable… I agree with most of what she has observed and published. Her work has been eye-opening, and it has given me the strength to exercise my courage every day in the face of my emotional fears. I have committed to being more open, more honest, and more expressive of my feelings toward others, regardless of the possible rejection and ridicule I might face. If you’ve never been scared before, try living like that for ONE week. Try expressing your feelings – own them and tell people without expecting anything in return – for a week, then let me know how much stamina it took to survive your week. I challenge you. I DARE you to live like that. Better yet, do it for THREE days. Maybe a week is too long to expect.  THREE days is all you have to do to experience what I’m talking about. Set aside your fears (you can’t get rid of them) and be honest about how you feel toward other people – in loving, gentle ways. If you are frustrated with someone, tell that person what BEHAVIORS frustrated you. Don’t use that time as a chance to whip someone’s psyche – it’s quite often the actions we dislike. But I’ve noticed we are much more at ease with expressing our malice and discontent with others. That’s fear talking for us. That’s not vulnerability. I’m challenging you to three measly days of telling those in your life that mean the most to you, how much they mean to you. If you are single, and you like someone, tell him or her. If you’ve just started dating someone but you feel strongly that you could love that person, tell that person. AND… here’s the kicker… DON’T expect anything in return. These are YOUR feelings. You own them and you experience them. They are yours to bestow on anyone you wish. That person doesn’t HAVE to like you back to validate the worth of your feelings. Stop giving away so much power. I guarantee after the first day of trying this, you are going to have more nerves than any person with stage fright.

You can’t let that stop you. As a culture, we’ve let our fears of someone else’s opinions or judgment keep us from authentically expressing our emotions to those who mean so much to us. Our days are numbered, but we don’t know the numbers. Tomorrow isn’t promised. You can go to bed one night thinking you will see a dear friend very soon, thinking about the things you wanted to say that night but the “timing” wasn’t right, or you were scared. When you wake up the next morning, that person could very well be gone. It’s happened to many of us in the past month. How many of us awoke that next morning and wished we had said more, hugged more, loved more, done more, to show how much that person meant to us? We allowed the chance to slip by because WE WERE AFRAID. On the flip side, those of you who receive attention from someone brave enough to let their deepest feelings show toward you, you don’t have to return those feelings, but please don’t dismiss those feelings. There are appropriate ways to gently validate that someone feels something strongly, but you can’t reciprocate that. In our fear of being overwhelmed by undesired attention, we react more harshly than we need to, and we generate more fear for the person who made him or herself vulnerable. Please respect that. It’s tough to overcome that fear and say what’s on your mind. When we react out of fear to someone’s genuine expression, we keep the vicious circle of fear going. Let’s find a way to stop it.

One of my best friends told me, about ten years ago, that most of the negativity we feel in our lives is a result of fear. I hadn’t heard that idea before he told me that. I’ve thought about that statement daily for over ten years. Lauriston, it was you that told me that. My friend, you set me on the path to living a warrior’s life with your statement. I’m glad of it, and I’m glad you are a dear friend to me. You’ve seen the change over the past ten years, as I have seen you change too. I have a story for you on my blog. I’ll post the link later. If you don’t mind, I’m going to share the story with everyone because I think it’s that important. It’s a Japanese story called “The Tiger’s Eyelash.”

I think it’s that important to learn to be patient with others and, most importantly, to be patient with ourselves when we have learned so much fear. As we have the patience to coax terrified animals into domestication, we need to cultivate that kind of gentle patience for the fearful person inside of each of us. Some days, we’ll find lots of courage inside, but other days will be difficult. That is the nature of our cyclical existence, of the balance of our experience. On those tough days, we must be patient with others, their reactions, and our reactions to them as we struggle to overcome our inner fears.

Everyone Has A Story

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I remember the night: January 10, 2015. I had purchased season tickets to a local Texas Music Series, and January 10 was the first concert of the series. I had to admit I wasn’t very familiar with the monthly line-up, but I’d been to a handful of other concerts in the series, so I knew this would be a fun concert with good music at the very least. The season tickets had been a Christmas gift for my boyfriend and I. The concerts seemed to be one thing we could enjoy together and not have to talk too much… yeah, things were that good. Even at Christmas, the gift had fallen flat, just like most gifts I had given him. The “oh, wow, thanks,” with a forced smile usually meant I had missed the moving target yet again. No matter how hard listened and remembered, nothing was quite good enough. Wasted guitar lessons, Turkish copper salt mills, hardware store gift cards. Nothing was quite practical or thoughtful enough.

I went to the January concert not quite knowing what to expect. I had heard the musician sing two songs, “Snake Farm” and “Screw You (We’re From Texas)” so I was expecting a lot of off-color humor but not a lot of thinking. That was ok with me. It was time to start a new semester at school, and I was glad to be back into the swing of things so I didn’t have to be at home, enduring stony silences or glares. I was depending on Ray Wylie Hubbard to give me some entertainment that would just numb my mind, and to enjoy the complimentary beer in the lobby during the breaks. At first, Hubbard filled the bill perfectly. Stories about his early haunts in Texas dives and 80’s – 90’s hot night clubs made me laugh, but they were about what I expected: hard living, booze drinking, looking at women, etc. I guess I felt better knowing I wasn’t the only one wasting my life. I was turning 45; half of my life was over, and what had I accomplished? I had two broken marriages, I was a single mom to a son with autism, and I had finally opened up to a committed relationship again only to be met with the same old song and dance. Nothing I did was good enough, and I was too demanding. Deep inside, I knew that wasn’t right, but my entire life had been lived that way. I didn’t know how to argue to myself that what I heard WASN’T right.

I didn’t know how to face that dragon, Joseph Campbell would say. Yes, I had been teaching archetypes in my English classroom for three or four years by that time. I liked the idea that the hero’s journey symbolically stood in for the different phases of my real life. I’d always liked stories, and found it easy to put myself into the place of the protagonist. When I thought of what the hero in a story faced, it gave me a little more motivation on those bad days, those days where I didn’t feel like getting out of bed, or those days where I’d “slept” 10 hours and awakened exhausted… I knew I was in a dark spot during that concert. I knew I was facing a dragon, but I was unarmed and unprepared. I’d had no mentor, so I couldn’t imagine how I’d crossed the threshold and gotten this far in my real life journey. Truthfully, I’d had a mentor, but I couldn’t quite figure out how the wisdom she’d given me translated into facing this dragon.

Hubbard said something funny, and it reminded me of something that I had just experienced in class the day before, so I leaned over to tell my partner about it.

“Shhhhh!” he responded, “We’re hear to listen to the music, not chat.”

That was about the five hundredth time he’d done that same thing to me that week. He had stopped me before I even got four words into my sentence. I was interrupting whatever he was interested in, and he couldn’t be bothered. No matter I only had a couple of sentences to say, and that would have been it. But, it wasn’t the specific thought hanging there between us that bothered me so much. What had bothered me, and continued to upset me, was the continued habit of his dismissing everything I tried to say. Literally, not figuratively, I had tried to have some conversations with him that week, and I hadn’t been able to state more than once sentence in five days. However, I had sat there and listened to many monologues about finding a job, working on whatever handyman project someone had him doing, and the other things he wished to talk about that week.

I just sat there for a moment, my mouth open stupidly, dumbstruck. I blinked a few times then snapped my mouth closed. I turned to face front and watch the performance while I held my beer to my mouth and began to sip. The cold beverage relieved a little bit of the heat rising behind my eyes. I managed to only let a small tear on my left cheek escape. It didn’t matter anyway – he couldn’t see it, nor would he have cared if he could have seen it. I don’t remember the song that Hubbard played. I remembered my litany I repeated, “How much more silence can I be expected to endure? Why isn’t it ok if I want to say something, ANYTHING? How have I ended up here?” I followed that with a reflection on turning 45, looking back at half my life, wasted, and here I was with someone I thought could have been a life partner, but who now barely seemed to tolerate me. Well, I thought, I’m too old now to have any more children, and people have their bad days or weeks, so I guess I’ll just “suck it up” and live with it. I couldn’t possibly interest anyone new anymore. I was suddenly struck by a thought – I still have my life to live, and it’s going to look just…like…this…

It’s amazing how many thoughts a person can have in the span of one or two minutes. All of that happened internally before the song was even through. Before I know it, I could barely control my eyes watering, and my nose sniffling. The song came to an end, and the performer immediately started talking about a concert tour from a time when he’d been about 40 years old. Oh, good, I said to myself, his talking will give me a moment to recover my composure. I pictured my heart inside me. Sometimes it looked like those Valentine’s hearts people draw to represent love, and sometimes it looked like a real heart in my head. I pictured it beating, slowly, red and pulsing with life, then I imagined a layer of ice building up over it, encasing my heart more thickly with every layer until my eyes stopped watering and my breathing turned almost normal. The pounding in my ears started to go away, and that’s when I heard it.

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

What? Did I just hear this brash, outspoken entertainer quote something about dragons and princesses? I peered at Hubbard down on the stage. Dragons and princesses, those are something I know about. Suddenly, I was whisked away by my love of Jungian archetypes and monomyths. I knew dragons represented something within us that needed to be defeated. Every person has to save him or herself, not one else can. At the same time, we also have the princess within us, that part of us that wants someone else to do the work. I had never run into anyone willing to do the work for me. I knew it was my responsibility. But, this Texas musician, who had been so rauckus, was he suddenly quoting Rilke in the middle of a concert? Whoa… Hubbard went on to talk about how this Rilke had impacted him at the age of 40. He saw that it was never too late to begin what you wanted to do, and so Hubbard had changed his life.  It wasn’t too late for me, was it? Maybe this wasn’t the end of all the possibilities in my life. I was used to thinking of my “dragon” as something dark or something outside of my own life. I had been looking for “darkness” within myself. Well, hell, there was plenty of darkness there. I had let someone else drag me so far down into that darkness, and I chose to remain there. It was so dark, I couldn’t see what weapons I had available; I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face in the darkness. All I could do was rage against “circumstances” and continue to harden my heart with anger and fear.

I thought a little bit longer while Hubbard played another song, a song related to the quote, but I’m not sure I needed to hear it at that point. I had already heard his message. A new, very short mentorship overlaid what I had already learned. His quote was just what I needed to “arm” myself and find my “dragon.” What if the dragons are princesses who are just waiting for us to show them something beautiful and courageous? I looked at the man sitting to my left. I had been looking at him as a dragon for so long. As silly as it sounds, I suddenly saw a princess who desperately wanted my love. I know that, somehow, but that princess couldn’t STILL be waiting for me to show love and courage. What had my offer of reuniting, agreeing to pay bills, and helping him get a degree that would help him find a job been, if not love? What had agreeing to counseling, facing all the rages, and still trying to remain open with him been, if not courage? I had admittedly to him, and willingly on my own part, made myself vulnerable to the very thing I feared the most – being taken advantage of and hurt. It had surely happened to, every time I tried to stand up for myself, or tried to put myself into the relationship too. That princess didn’t WANT to be rescued. That princess was HAPPY being the dragon and challenging folks to show love and courage, then burn that love and courage with his flames until they became just…like…him…

And suddenly, I had my weapons to vanquish my own dragon and rescue my own princess. That love and courage I had been throwing toward someone else, those were my weapons against my own darkness. They were what I needed to stay compassionate and caring about others. I was throwing away my weapons to someone who didn’t need them, want them, or appreciate them. I thought of my heart encased in its layers of ice inside myself, and then I pictured a flaming sword shattering that ice. I saw myself holding that burning steel without harm, and I could see myself wearing armor, not shiny armor, but beat up, blackened armor, and I saw all the hurtful arrows and darts of contempt begin to bounce off my well-worn shields… My eyes dried up. I felt good. I felt very good! I had just needed that one last piece of wisdom from a person who never knew he stood in as a mentor for me that night. I’m sure he never intended to, anyway!

I stayed after the concert to meet the musician, not caring if it made my boyfriend mad. It did. I finally didn’t care anymore. This was something I wanted to do, and I was going to do it. I met Hubbard, and we chatted a little bit about his mom, who had taught English literature. We talked briefly about archetypes and Rilke, and the evening drew to a close. I rode home that night with renewed vigor. I was practically shaking with eagerness to be rid of my darkness, and to make my way on the hero’s journey “home.” I knew the time had come, just as quickly as that. It wasn’t long after that I requested my partner move out and find his another place to live. I was relieved, and I was free.

Do we know how often we say things that might mentor other people? I doubt it. Just as they say ten seconds of thoughtless chatter can destroy someone for ten years, I also believe that ten seconds of insightful wisdom, shared freely and without expectation, can transform someone for the better forever. I take it as my responsibility now to share what I can, what I know to be true for me, and to tell stories that night heal the world. I may or may not indirectly mentor someone through my efforts. All I know is, one night, when I least expected it, a perfect stranger spoke straight to my soul and set me back on the hero’s path. Now, because of that gift, I seek to do the same.

A Little Quiet Goes a Long Way

I hope you’re having an awesome day! If not, it’s time to turn it around. You can do it – change your attitude or perspective. Share a few smiles, fake them if you have to, until you feel better. How the day turns out is totally up to you.

Yesterday I mentioned the Mentor archetype. I will post a story today on my blog, but I wanted to take a moment to mention something related to the Mentor. I mention this particular topic because its come up over and over for me this morning. What I’ve heard is a repetition of quote, news stories, and observations about how BUSY all of us are. We’re busy working, busy cooking, busy taking the kids somewhere, busy finishing something, bust surfing the Internet… We are just covered up in input and information. We stay constantly busy all day, and when we need to sleep, we can’t sleep. Is it any wonder? We’ve given our brains so many stimuli during the day, our poor brains are still trying to process what happened at 1 or 2 pm.  Why? Because we never took time when we had it to sit down in a quiet area and just breathe or relax for a few minutes. That’s all our brain needs – just a few minutes to stop receiving input and file away what it needs to keep. How many times a day do you stop doing something and just breathe? I’m not talking about vegging out and watching TV. I don’t mean listening to music. I mean literally sitting or lying down, in the quiet, and concentrating and the breath going in and out of your body. Remember, I mentioned yesterday we take 20,000 breaths per day – what if you noticed 100 on them today? Simply sit down, in the quiet (no stimuli), and counted each of those breaths?

Part of the mess we are in as a culture is the compulsive need to surround ourselves with constant input. This could have stemmed from our childhood of constant activity, our economic lean toward productivity – if I’ not doing anything I’m not being productive, or it could be that we simply don’t want to sit in the quiet and reflect on anything. I know that it’s difficult for me to sit and think about things I’ve done during the day, or to just count breaths. However, this self-reflection is an essential part of becoming a better person than one was the day before. What we want to avoid is feeling badly about anything we’ve done. We’ve been trained that it’s not “right” to feel badly – ever. This is a ludicrous notion. Sometimes we ARE going to feel badly about something. That doesn’t mean we’re not happy; it means we’re thinking about our actions and looking for a way to improve them the next time. That’s self-reflection, and it won’t happen while we’re busy, busy, busy with this, that, or the other urgent need. Sometimes, the most urgent need is to take a few moments to ourselves. That time we take for ourselves is our time to Mentor ourselves. Maybe we’re at a point in our lives where no Mentor figure is available. We can teach ourselves something, but we have to have the stillness and patience to do it.

Continue to smile today, even if you’re busy! Borrow my smile if you have to. Then take a few minutes, force yourself to do it, but take a few and count your breaths. See what happens afterward. Try it for a few days. See if you start to sleep better. I’m not making guarantees, but it seems worth a try. J