In the 1980’s, my father worked at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. He went to work one day complaining that he had mice in his home, a common occurrence in big cities. One of the fellow foremen gave him a cat and she came to be known as Facey McTracey. Facey came home and got right to work, she scared away each and every little mouse in our home and in the homes of our neighbors….Facey was a killer, that was her nature. She was rewarded for this behavior by receiving affection and yummy food from her family and from the neighbors.
However, as the mice dwindled so did the accolades and praise. Facey began to travel to the park across the street, the 'Cat Club' I called it, to find mice. After locating a mouse, she’d carry the little innocent mouse home in her mouth, careful to keep it alive. Once home, she’d begin to meow like the dickens until someone came outside to see her. We always knew the mouse meow, ‘whiiiiirrrllllll, whiiiiirrrlllll, whirrrrrlllll’. The mouse meow was not a happy sound to me, it was a sound that signified death, a sad sound. It was a sound that let me know someone was going to die, someone that had a life. Maybe this someone was a mother or father, a sister or brother, a friend or foe, a prankster or smarty-pants. I loved animals and hated seeing Facey put on a show, as if in a circus, of killing a poor innocent little prey.
One day, I went outside, tired of the meows, tired of the dead mice, tired of Facey; after all, Facey scratched me constantly just because I tried to pet her on her stomach! Well, on this day I decided I was going to have compassion and save this poor innocent cutsie little mouse. Brown paper bag in hand, and supergirl cape on my back, I dashed over to the mouse and picked it up. That poor innocent cutsie little mouse had the nerve to bite me! I dropped it on the ground and ran in the house; ‘ungrateful little mouse’, I thought.
At this tender age of eight, I knew that I could get rabies from being bit by a mouse. But then the anger I imagined my mother would showcase toward me was enough to take the risk of dying from rabies, so I told only my little sister of the episode; if I died, at least someone would know the story. For days I watched my body for signs of rabies and when a few days passed, I felt I was in the green. Facey, probably thinking, ‘Nor is such hypocrite, I saw her eat a turkey burger the other night for dinner’, had one this battle and I never tried to save one of Facey McTracey’s prey again.
What lessons do you think I could have learned from this story?
I reflected on this story many years later and these are the lessons I found.
Facey McTracey was a killer; that was her calling, her nature, so fighting her in this regard was bound to be futile. But, all that being said, one of my spiritual gifts is that I see all sentient beings, I recognize their spirit, I allow them to see the beauty in themselves. I saw this mouse and I had compassion for it. Compassion is contagious, when we show compassion to others and serve other people, those people and those who witness the act of compassion want to pass it on to others as well. That is not to say that deeds done undisclosed do not have merit and impact, they absolutely do!! It is my belief, however, that many people operate in the physical world and so it is a gift to see, hear, and pass on beautiful acts of compassion. Who knows what would have happened had I told my mother that I was trying to save a mouse’s life and that that act resulted in me getting bitten? Perhaps she would have helped me save the next mouse? Perhaps not.
The second lesson I learned is that fear can be a powerful deterrent to achieving our dreams. We allow the process of achieving our dreams to be instrumental in achieving our dreams rather than expressive in achieving our dreams and so then, when things don't go as expected, we believe the process has failed us. Rather if we could search for the inherent lesson in the process or obstacle, we would see that obstacles are a way of steering us in the right direction. I allowed the fear of the wrath I imagined my mother would have and the literal fear of the biting mouse paralyze me, and I relinquished my dream of saving the mouse. At the age of eight, I probably looked at the process of saving the mouse as expressive in achieving my dreams but, when I didn't seek to find the lesson in that act, I most likely changed the process of achieving dreams to instrumental and since I assumed failure and let fear takeover, I didn't try again. Perhaps if I had told one of my parents, they could have helped me come up with a better way to save the mice, or perhaps not. I will never know because I stopped and gave up when the notion of fear presented itself.
In your life, you will, in your mind, be confronted with fear. Maybe, just maybe, try to push through and express your truest self. You never know the impact of your actions, the butterfly effect it could have on the world. Dare to be fearless. Dare to be compassionate. Dare to make a difference.
Stay tuned for Part II of Facey McTracey!
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