A rancher was returning from his weekly journey across the desert with his feed and provisions from the COOP when he came upon a man who was walking dead center of the railroad tracks. It was obvious that the man had been walking a LONG time and appeared to be near death -sun-baked, dehydrated and barely able to walk. As the rancher approached, the man collapsed into a veritable bag of flesh and bones. The rancher picked the man up, put him in his truck and proceeded home.
When they arrived, the rancher and his wife took the man into the house and tended to his needs – Water – bath – fresh clothes, Food and a comfortable bed.
The man slept for 2 days. When the Ranchers noticed him beginning to stir, the wife thought it would be good to offer the man some smooth hot tea with honey tea, so she put the tea-pot on the stove. The man was still very weak and not quite coherent when the teapot reached a rolling boil and began to whistle softly at first and increasingly louder. SUDDENLY, the man screamed, leapt out of the bed, grabbed a baseball bat that was leaning in the corner and commenced pummeling that teapot until it was rendered duly destroyed. The Rancher and his wife were understandably alarmed, and didn’t interfere with this teapot murder lest the crazy man turn on THEM with that bat. When things settled down, the rancher, with great trepidation, asked the question: “Why did you destroy our teapot?”
The man’s simple response?: “Ya gotta kill’m when they’re young!
We all have triggers deeply embedded in our psyche from prior experiences and every one of us has a threshold . . . and myriad ways of coping.
Commonly labeled “PTSD” -Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
When we acknowledge our own personal version of PTSD (without judgement), I believe we learn gracious forgiveness when we witness people acting “irrationally” or “out of character”.
Let’s be kind . . . Ask why . . . and hold the space simply by listening.
Generosity of soul!