Emotions

They exploded as if reacting to an unexpected sudden and loud backfire from a passing car or truck. Clearly, I was neither prepared for it, nor expecting it. Far from it, in fact. My mind, as I was driving, was happily focused on the deep sense of joy and contentment I’ve been feeling lately over the unusual path my spiritual journey has taken me thus far. That sense of joy was smothered in a blanket of calm as I also pondered, with a sense of comfortable wonder, where the journey might lead me next. What exploded? My emotions. In the same nano-second that the backfire would take to occur, my emotions changed from the highest they could be to the lowest. Just like that I found myself experiencing a profound sense of sadness and deep shame, as well as a permeating feeling of helplessness.

Why did this happen? It was a deer that brought it about. A deer that had just got hit by a truck and was lying in the ditch by the side of the road. A deer that wasn’t killed, but rather badly injured—to the point that it was trying to get up but couldn’t. His head was swaying back in forth as it was writhing in agony trying to do what they do—continue running. The truck had stopped, and the driver was exiting, hopefully trying to do something positive. There was nothing I could do so I continued past the scene.


While it was the deer that precipitated the radical change in my emotions, they weren’t about the deer. They were about me, who I am, and what I do and don’t do. And they were about humanity itself, many of us. You see, the mind’s picture that the deer painted for me was one that involves all of humanity. There are always, always situations where we see, if we are tuned in, humans who are in deep, deep pain, often crying out in agony—either openly or silently. They, like the deer, are trying to do what comes naturally in those situations—run, take flight from it, anything to get past it. And often, like the deer, they are alone. 


That scene turned my emotions from a high to a low because I saw people, and the potential for people yet to come, who need everything I have to offer to help them in their time of overwhelming hurt and need—someone willing to let them know that they are loved and that someone cares, with no strings attached.  I grasped the knowledge that, yes, there have been times I have failed to do that. And I was ashamed. I can do better that that, and as long as God plants lessons like this in my path, I pray that I will.