What I Learned From A Suffering Kitten

 

A couple agreed to foster a kitten found, oddly enough, at a Lowe’s store. The kitten was in very bad shape. Along with the usual dehydration and inevitable malnourishment from having been lost or abandoned, this little ball of black fluff had no apparent use of its legs. Nonetheless, the foster couple did their best to support the kitten’s recovery, and eventually it was able to drag itself by its front legs, and finally healed to the point where it could run and play.

As I watched the very touching video of the kitten’s healing journey, I became mesmerized by what I considered the fundamental reason for its recovery. Namely, what Charles Darwin (in much more poetic terms, of course) called “adapt or die.” The kitten, at some level of its being, knew it had to adapt to its new situation – body, environment, circumstances – or die. So adapt it did. Which means, although I don’t pretend to be able to read a kitten’s mind, the kitten never looked back. Just forward. Always forward. To the next meal, the next possible step, the next moment of kindness and support. Of love.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were so wise! We ruminate over past mistakes, over an injury, a failed relationship, endlessly. We don’t realize how harmful that is to us. You can’t move forward when you’re looking backwards. Certainly, it’s important to take a moment to assess what went wrong or awry in a given situation, but once that’s done, move on. Be like that kitten who so inspired us to ever look forward.  

Is it easy? For us, not always. Mainly because we get stuck on wanting to blame ourselves or others, rather than release and let go. What’s done truly is done; there is no undoing, but there is course correction. There is learning. There is adapting to the new situation, rather than “dying” by staying forever in the old. Letting go is a skill. It gets easier as we practice it. I have found that the more I practice letting go of the smaller disappointments and setbacks, the easier it gets to let go of bigger ones.

“Adapt or die.” Done!