Turn The Page.
This week we finally decided it was time to put down our 17 year old cat Timmy.
It wasn’t a very tough decision. In fact, it was long overdue.
We had been enduring his incontinence, vomiting and general kitty dementia for far too long. He was suffering. And our overall quality of life at home had been hijacked by our unwillingness to wave the white flag, call the fight and end the saga.
When we have the ability to make a change—when we need to make a change—and we can’t find a way forward to make the change, we suffer.
And until we suffer enough, we won’t change; once the suffering is great enough, we change.
After considerable reflection throughout these last couple of weeks, I realized that our suffering with this animal had started many years before.
Timmy was a special cat. I have had maybe a dozen cats in my life and none of them were as “touched” as Timmy. From pounding his paw incessantly on closed doors in the middle of the night, to stealing food from the table, to chewing on people’s hair when they sat on the sofa, he was just a tough cat to love. And I love cats. Timmy was singular in his ability to irritate the hell out of everyone and he did this quite well for 17 years. He is the reason my father-in-law refuses to have a cat.
With that backdrop, since Timmy crossed the rainbow bridge last week, life at home has been markedly better. Markedly. Massively actually. And what has struck me about this moment are these two things.
First, our willingness to tolerate circumstances that are simply not acceptable. If we simply are unable turn the page and make a change, then we are choosing to suffer the status quo rather than change. We choose the suffering.
And secondly, it was a reminder just how liberating it can be to finally take action. There are so many reasons we allow ourselves to stay stuck. But the moment you take action and make the change you know you need to make, there is a lightness and an energy shift that is undeniable.
What lives at the core of a lot of meaningful change from states of stuckness is suffering. It creates the conditions that forces us to finally take action.
Clearly, there are moments in life when we are forced to accept conditions or external circumstances that are uncomfortable or downright miserable; like war or natural disasters. That’s life.
But what about situations when there is a deep caring, commitment and love involved in the dynamic? How do we reconcile deep emotional commitment with dysfunction in the relationship? This is what makes those changes very challenging; career, people, pets, the emotional entanglements are complex.
Monday Meditation: After a 10 count of deep breathing.
Here are (5) questions to ask yourself right now that can spark the beginning of real change.
We all have some form of Timmy in our lives and that corrosive energy can slowly erode quality of life. Don’t let Timmy undermine your equanimity. Take action, turn the page and make that change.
Have a great week and let’s turn the page on one area of being stuck!
