survival and an old dog learning new tricks

“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

(my new neighbor is NOT a dog / Julie Cook / 2022)

Often when we reach a certain age in life…
an age where there is more life on the backside rather than what’s
on the front side, we have the tendency to become rather complacent.
We cling to the notion of ‘been there, done that’…in that we think we’ve pretty
much done, seen and experienced most everything that there is to experience.

We settle in while making ourselves comfortable.
We become glibly set in our ways of both coming and going.

Status quo seems to be the name of the game and if it’s not hurting, broken
or missing, all is well.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a seismic shift is felt…life happens.

Apple carts are upset.
Everything is turned upside down.
The norm is anything but
while we are suddenly left with a foreboding sense of trepidation.

And that’s when it happens.

That innate prewired sense of fight or flight kicks in.

It’s a better learn quick moment vs the consequence of ‘or else’…
The ‘or else’ situation is where one is left with the results of either surviving
or dying.

I think most of us are prewired for survival.
It’s in our nature…or so it seems.
Or at least it is in mine.

Now don’t get me wrong.
There have been, and continue being, plenty of days when I could readily pull
the covers over my head…
Nay, prefer to pull said covers!
All the while yearning never to emerge from bed…this as the thought of getting up
to face yet another day of the unknown, the painful, the troubling
leaves me weak-kneed, nauseated and flat out scared.

The tears come and go like fickled summer showers..popping up
when least expected or wanted.

And like those unexpected showers, they quickly come and go.

So as I begin to push my way through this thicket of the unknown.
I find myself charting new waters or rather waters I’d thought had been charted
and finished long ago.

So whoever really said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks might
never have known that some old dogs simply need to learn those new tricks
in order to survive.

Here’s to surviving while moving forward…

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect,
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.
But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward
to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14