Tigers

I read an article today that quotes someone as saying "ginger confers absolute power over tigers." Well, actually, the article says that ginger doesn't do that but that it does many other things.

This tiger concept caught me. How many of you have tigers in your lives? Maybe some of you are lucky enough to have real tigers; I wouldn't mind but I think it's illegal in my part of the country. I see tigers as those problems that really stalk you. They crop up again and again. Fend them off with a chair, calm them with music, vanquish them with a whip, but tigers are hard to kill and they're beautiful so why would you want to?

Tigers? Problems? beautiful? yep, you gotta say they're beautiful because you have to claim them as your own, sooner or later. And if you claim them, eventually you have to do something about them, and those are opportunitites to grow.

Now, growth hurts. Ask any kid having growing pains, or someone growing new skin after being burned. But I think being stagnant is even more painful. Who wants to stay the same your entire life?

The problem comes when you are committed to someone else, and your individual growth causes friction. You're not growing together, you're growing against eaach other. That's a different kind of pain. Your tigers are not the same as the other person's tigers.

Maybe one is black and one is white.

Or maybe just varying shades of orange.

Why struggle with the tigers? Why not embrace them, enjoy their beauty and forever keep them close?

Ah, but tigers are carnivores and you can no more change their nature than you could change their stripes. Their essential nature is to attack, to hunt, to stalk, to kill.

So, I want "absolute power over any tigers." I want to be unstalked, unhunted.

How does this occur?

I think we are talking about peace. Peace in the heart, peace in the mind, peace in the soul.

And so I pray. For peace. Continually. Always.

"Absolute power over any tigers."