If you've never lived with a rabbit, you may not be aware that they're quite the interior decorators. They designate a "toilet" corner of their dwellings (or sometimes two corners--one for #1 and one for #2). They locate the perfect spot for meal consumption and slide their food bowls in place accordingly. They arrange their bedding into a careful quilt of thick and thin. George even remodels his "walls" and "floors."
However, as I learned for myself last week, there are important rules to rabbit feng shui that trump aesthetic preference.
Hannah's home is situated atop a wide ottoman about 18 inches high (where she prefers it), though every once in a while, she manages to rock herself right to the floor. When I heard a crash in the bedroom, I knew she'd done it again. This time, only half the cage touched ground while the other half rested against the side of the ottoman, spilling food, bedding, and rabbit turds into the wall of the opposite side. I gently slid her back up onto the ottoman and gripped my fingers around the wire enclosure, preparing to pull the cage apart.
"What are you DOING?" Hannah gasped.
"I'm going to fix your home," I reassured her.
"Fix? It just flipped over. Everything's a mess!"
"Yes, I see that. That's why I'm going to fix it for you right now."
"Hands off, lady. I need a little time here. I'm not you, you know."
Ouch.
I'd clearly just been dissed, but couldn't wrap my thick human mind around what Hannah had meant by that. Luckily she filled me in before I had to ask her (sparing me further embarrassment).
"When your world gets shaken up, you need to re-ground yourself before you can move forward with repairing the damages. You can't just go running from person to person and project to project and expect everything to fall back into place. You need to first be where you are."
Talk about hitting the nail on the head. All at once I realized how even the subtlest of breezes had almost completely swept me away in recent weeks--before they suddenly dropped me with a crash quite similar to the sound Hannah's cage had made. I wasn't grounded. I didn't allow myself that time.
"Wow, Hannah. You're..."
"Of course I'm right."
"Why didn't you...."
"You never asked. And even if I did warn you, would you have listened?" (Animals can understand a lot about us and what we're thinking without us having to say it in full, but Holly, Quincy, and George usually let me finish a sentence so I don't feel quite so intuitively inferior to them. Hannah rarely lets me finish a sentence.)
No, I probably wouldn't have listened. I probably wasn't ready to listen until now.
So, where am I at this given moment (meaning not where I've been or where I want to go)? I am 27 years old. Single. A size 12-14. A vegetarian with severe gluten, dairy, and refined sugar intolerance. An orange belt in karate. A full-time marketing coordinator and part-time adjunct professor of communication studies. I have far more debt than I'd care to carry. My apartment is a disaster. I have trouble waking up in the mornings. My writing comes only in spurts. I do this really cool thing with animals on the side. And I just began a dog obedience trainer certification program.
I don't like this place very much. I want to say that I'll be 28 in two months, just broke up with someone I wasn't happy with, and am losing weight constantly. I want to explain that my diet is due to the likelihood of my having celiac disease and it's not some low-carb fad. I want to clarify that I'm training for my black belt and that my current full-time job is not my "forever field." I want to affirm my intention to make my writing and work with animals my main focus someday. I want to boast about my plan for paying off debt and building my savings account or attribute the problem to my struggle to make ends meet post-divorce. I want to claim that I'd be perfectly organized if I wasn't so busy and am working to restore sanctuary to my home.
But I'm refraining....
I am where I am. I'll restore balance to the chaos that is my life soon enough, as Hannah did.
2 comments:
i adore hannah. she said everything perfectly. i would take notice of your answers to her question of where are you. it would seem that everything you described were things that you are not happy about. and most of these things that you want to change about yourself/life cant happen over night, what you can do, is change your outlook of them. "if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change" - wayne dyer.
a good thing to try and something that i constantly do, is every month or so, ask yourself the "where am i question" and instead of answering negatively, try to answer in a more positive light (ie- i lost a dress size this week, no gluten attacks in the past month, have 4 more belts to go till my black belt, finally have some quiet space, etc) its a great way to start changing your perception of the world and by doing so, you will allow more gifts and blessings into your life.
ps- keep up the writing. great stuff,
You're right that by my own standards (which are perhaps too harsh sometimes) I am not happy about many things in my life right now. But Hannah's lesson for me was to be humble and embrace it all as the reality I've created before I focus on turning it around (even in perception). I've never allowed myself to just BE me (and publicly admit to being me), whether I've been satisfied with me or not.
From here, I can begin shifting to a more positive perception as you suggest (thank you).
Isn't Hannah a riot? I so admire her sass.
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