Might this Be a Turtle Story?

There is a pond near me that I am now in the habit of sitting by for a bit each day to engage in the animal equivalent of “people watching”. There is a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks who delight in playing the thermals, and a river otter who seems as though he pauses to knock on a door before diving under a pond-side stump. And the main attraction: two huge snapping turtles.

The other day, as I watched them, I became aware that I had developed rather extensive stories about them. That one is the “he”, and this one the “she”. He likes to show off for her, twisting and writhing, demonstrating his swimming prowess and ability to catch even the wiliest frog or fish. She suns herself in the shallows, building up her strength in preparation for laying this year’s clutch of eggs. The truth is, I have no idea if either is a “he” or a “she”, or what motivates them to do what they do, or if they even are in relation to one another. And yet, until it dawned on me that these were just stories that my mind had concocted to make sense of what I was seeing, to fill in gaps of facts, I had been treating them as utter truths.

And then came the second perspective-shifting flash …. If I do this about turtles without even realizing it, how often and to what extent do I do it about people???

Creating stories about animals, or even people, when we know we’re doing so is fine and fun and serves our creativity, as long as we bring awareness to the fact that we are doing it, and as long we clearly place these stories in the “Fiction” section of our mental libraries.

This jolt of awareness has served as a great reminder to me of the importance of looking at the lens through which we perceive the world, not just through the lens. Our brain is constantly taking in information and attempting to give it meaning. The meaning it gives to information can depend on our past experiences, our cultural or familial influences, our sense of safety in the moment and myriad other factors, which we can think of as the "lens" through which we perceive the world. Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist teacher, said years ago (and I hope I'm paraphrasing accurately), that we all carry around our own stage sets and conflict can arise when our stage set bumps into someone else's stage set. I love this metaphor! When it seems like I'm in conflict with someone, I can almost feel our stage sets knocking into each other. The point here is that if we don't bring our attention to the lens or the stage set through which we're seeing life, we won't understand how our perception may be distorted or at least incomplete.

So now, when I find myself thinking about people and believing my thoughts about them to be “truth”, I’ve taken to asking myself, “Might this be a turtle story?”

And for final words of wisdom on turtles, I leave you in the adept hands of poet Ogden Nash:

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
Ogden Nash

May all beings find their truth in nature, and know their true nature to be goodness,
Your CMP Family