Born & bred in the briar patch!

Realized recently that the focus of my book is on my relationship with relationships.

While it hadn't dawned on me before, my consciousness had certainly been flitting about it. Knew that I wanted to celebrate all the energies, the stories, that helped me gain & maintain my spiritual footing.

A common thread among many of those energies & stories seems to be the importance of identifying challenging situations or troubling problems in order to move past them. Strikes me that a major problem with identifying things is that the process can take so long, it can become a familiar part of our life. We can stay stuck rather than detach, ignoring that it’s time to see the issue for what it is, giving it a tip of the hat, then moving past without trying to best it.

This limiting tendency of rehashing perceived issues rather than letting them go brings to mind an Uncle Remus story about Brer Rabbit & the Tar Baby.

Seems that one day, as he was walking down a dusty country road, as carefree as you please, ol' Brer Rabbit came across a Tar Baby, a glob of tar & turpentine dressed up in clothing & a hat by Brer Fox to trick Brer Rabbit.

Now, Brer Rabbit didn't realize what it was, which was just what Brer Fox had hoped. When the Tar Baby didn't answer Brer Rabbit's greeting, ol' Brer Rabbit reacted to the perceived ill manners by taking a swipe at the offender.

Well, the Tar Baby didn't budge, but Brer Rabbit sure found his hand stuck deep in a glob of tar. Even when he realized the actual situation, Brer Rabbit made things worse & worse for himself, getting more & more completely stuck where he was, totally at the mercy of his arch enemies, Brer Fox & Brer Bear.

Now, ol' Brer Rabbit should have seen the Tar Baby for what it was - a glob of tar with clothes & a hat - and walked on by.

I can't count the number of times I acted like Brer Rabbit. How many times did I try to "resolve" a difficult relationship or problem, only to get sucked in deeper & deeper?

Thank goodness, Brer Rabbit kept his wits about him, finagling Brer Fox into playing to his strengths rather than weaknesses, tossing the trussed up rabbit into the sticky, brambly, thorny briar patch where Brer Fox expected him to perish miserable. Instead, the infuriated fox heard that dang rabbit call out to him - "I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox! Born and bred in the briar patch!" as he skipped away as merry as a cricket.

Sure do hope that I'm more & more like that clever rabbit, learning life lessons, keeping my wits about me, and when I do get stuck in issues that seem made to suck me in further & further, to look to my core strengths & get back to a place where I can skip away to new freedom, merry as a cricket.