Year of Discovery (Week 16: Animal Love; Discomfort)

This is my last week in Kenya before I move. I split this last week between Lamu and Nairobi. It was a week spent with incredible friends from different spaces in my Nairobi life, while continuing work that’s opening my eyes up in pursuit of my four learning questions for this year. A nostalgia is slowly setting in as I say goodbye to a place I’ve called home for 7.5 years.

This week, I’m sharing reflections on animals and their love, and on discomfort as a source of understanding.

What Animals Teach Us About Love and Kindness

This week was one of random tragedy. For anyone who knows me personally, they know how much of a cat person I am and especially of my own Kitty Cat. Often during the day, she ventures out into the world and I imagine enjoys the company of other cats and humans. And at night, she comes home to cuddle, eat and hang out with us.

On Tuesday night, we heard her come in through a window and start meowing, as she usually does to let us know she’s home. We waited for her in the bedroom to come see us after she ate and when she walked into the room, we saw her limp in, emaciated and with blood crusting her left eye. In a panic, we immediately called vets to see which ones were open and rushed her to the animal hospital.

When we were waiting for our cab to arrive, she was eating, purring and continuing to show us the love and affection she always has, even while she was in such deep pain. Her silence in the car (without her usual meowing) was a sign of how much numbed suffering she was experiencing. We heard from the vet this morning that she needs surgery to take her eye out.

I’m writing about Kitty Cat today not because of her accident, but because of how much the way she is inspires me everyday to be better. She gives love unconditionally to whatever guests we have, is so incredibly intuitive that she knows when to rest on my stomach when I am feeling frustrated or anxious and holds a beautiful tension of independence and dependence. I often look at her and feel only love and admiration and think to myself how lucky I am to share a space and a home with her.

My beautiful cat, come onto my heart full of love;
Hold back the claws of your paw,
And let me plunge into your adorable eyes
Mixed with metal and agate.
- “The Cat,” Charles Baudelaire

I’m grateful that she is alive and when I felt myself getting angry and frustrated by the situation, I remember her unconditional love that she kept giving even after she was hurt. It’s not worth putting out negative energy into the world when suffering happens to create even more suffering. As Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh says, there can be no happiness without suffering and no suffering without happiness. The best we can do is reorient our minds to view events and situations with compassion for others and wisdom for ourselves. In knowing that everything is seasonal, we know that our hearts will heal, our tears with dry and life will continue.

Some poetic reflections on cats here and here.

Questions to reflect on:

• What is your relationship like with animals? Where does that come from?
• What can you learn from the animals around you, your family or your friends?

Discomfort as a Source of Understanding

One of the most special parts of my YoD is the continuous process of slowing down and having the time to understand the discomfort I feel in various situations (instead of quickly moving past them and being bothered by the next thing that emerges). By doing so, I can grow my self awareness by understanding the root of the issue, grow my self-acceptance by seeing my nature vs my nurture and set personal goals that enable me to lessen suffering and engage with others in a more positive way.

Emotional intelligence = self awareness + other awareness (empathy) + self management + other management

Self awareness = understanding ourselves + seeing ourselves as others see us

I deepened my understanding of discomfort this past weekend in Lamu. It was one filled with the joy of being by the sea and incredible food. But the weekend had its waves. The experience reminded me of something I heard once in a dharma talk; how funny is it that being on vacation doesn’t equate to being blissfully happy — that no matter how incredible our external environment is, we can still suffer because of our own internal perceptions? There were times this weekend when I was flooded with anxiety which led me to closing in on myself, which happens often on group trips. Instead of letting it slide, I spent some time digging deeper into the reasons why this happens. I realized that it’s never about the people (who I admire and adore), but it’s about my personal craving for connection over company. Oftentimes in group trips (especially with people I don’t know as well), company overshadows connection because people have differing levels of familiarity, interests and vulnerability with one another. This creates a mixed bag of engagement.

In the business world, I often found that I also struggled at networking events, because I craved connection over company (or sometimes in these cases, transaction). The moment someone engaging with me looks over my shoulder to see who else is in the room, my heart drops. I always wondered what the alternatives were to meeting people for work that could balance both connecting with their humility and advancing the work that both parties do forward.

From this reflection around discomfort, I realize that there are tools I can use to create more connection in various settings. In understanding that every person wants to be seen and understood, there’s opportunities to build intentional communities that start with connection (and to bring these on the weekend trips). It’s all about setting expectations and getting buy-in. In the business world, it’s also understanding my values: that I want to truly know the people that I work with. Instead of trying to project what I think others want me to be or expect from me (which doesn’t allow for authentic connection), it’s about being a more authentic version of myself.

“Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are too busy in wasting their vital creative energy to project themselves as this or that, dedicating their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like rather than actualizing their potentiality as a human being.” — Bruce Lee

Questions to reflect on:

• In what ways can you become more authentic to yourself?
• What are practices you can put in place to slow down?
• What situation over the last few weeks has created the most discomfort — why did it bother you?

What I’m watching this week: The Science of Popularity