Day 27 - Who Would You Be Without Your Story

Apr 28, 2020

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New addition to the list of animals seen from the camp, but I will get to that. One thing about living outside is that it makes you’re more hardy. You get scrapes and bites and sometimes if can feel like a slow attrition.

I decided to run to the edge of the reserve where there is an anti-poaching camp. I ran out through high terrain, through dark soils and wet grass. I saw herds of zebra and even ostriches.
At the halfway pointing I was bonking as athletes call it. I felt like I could lie down next to the road and just fall asleep. I was going to pay the price for fasting the day before. What followed was 6 kilometers of run/walking mind games. The animals must have been perplexed watching this man staggering by himself back towards his camp.

Back at camp I immediately sensed something was wrong. Two hyenas were by the fire pit, one with my wash-up sponge in his mouth. There was a feeling that something was going down. On the far banks of the river there were five more hyenas snarling at a pack of wild dogs.

I don’t know if you have ever seen a dog fight, but imagine a hyena and a pack of wild dogs and you would get the energy of what had broken out next to my camp. A hyena got isolated and got bitten from all sides. Blood spattered into the water. Suddenly the pack turned and ran across the river.

Not waning to miss anything I turned and ran after the dogs into the clearing. They brought down a scrub hare and played a game with a zebra. A hyena tried to teal the scrub hare and got set upon by all the dogs. The dogs tore up the clearing and killed an impala where the hyena moved in on the meat. Nothing plays the survival percentages like the skill of the hyena.

Byron Katie (https://thework.com/) always asks, who would you be without your story. In this moment without it, who would you be? Usually without the story you find yourself sitting in a chair somewhere or run/walking down the road. Everyone has a story about being a victim or not having enough. The person who you try to help but won’t let go of their story they have to do it all alone.

Clean pain is when we bang our leg and rub it ouch. Dirty pain is when we tell the story of being a clumsy idiot for the next ten years. Mostly we live in the story of what’s happening rather than what’s happening.

There is a weird metaphysical component to how life follows our stories. The key is to pay attention to the ones that cause suffering. What I’m sayin is that you have two options to become more aware:

Ask yourself what story you are telling about yourself when you re suffering
Or you can get into a hyena wild dog pack fight.

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