Respond/React
“One
thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
Atticus
Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
I don't know about you,
but sometimes my conscience punishes me. The other day, for instance,
I was trying to put out food for the black cat that has been
occupying my front porch since his owner died. He was winding around
in front of my legs so that I couldn't take a step, so I gently moved
him to one side with my foot. His response to that was to take a
round-house swipe at my bare legs and draw blood. Without thinking, I
booted him off the porch. I struck an
animal—he had been instinctual in scratching me, and I had been just
as instinctual in kicking him. I felt terrible about it.
Sometimes we humans
operate on instinct. We (at least I) act without thinking, and then
wonder why our actions are “taken the wrong way.” We speak
without compassion and our words wound. We operate on impulse rather
than empathy. We become defensive when no one intends to threaten us.
It's our lizard brain in action. We all have it, even if we're
well-educated, even if we're ivy league. We can't escape it because,
well, we're actually animals—animals with a cerebral cortex to be
sure, but animals all the same.
The one thing we can to
about our instinctual nature is to become conscious of it. We can be
aware of when our lizard brain is triggered, and consider how to
respond rather than simply react. Sometimes, our brain holds an old
memory of something or someone who hurt us, and this new slight
reminds us of that. If we learn to control our reaction, we can
remind ourselves that this situation is not the same; that this
person is not that person, and should not bear the brunt of our old
trauma. Responding, rather than simply reacting is the key.
Yes, we do have a
reactionary brain, and we have had it since before we stood upright
and lost our full-body hair. We will always have animal instincts and
we will always need to find ways to civilize the aggressive ones. But
we can do it. Atticus Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird, “Simply
because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason
for us not to try...” This is how we evolve into less warlike
creatures, folks—civilize the lizard in us. That black cat and I
have a lot of evolving to do.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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