by Melody Bowen
Barking at Thunder
Obviously, my reasoning with them never worked. They kept barking and howling until I sent them to their biscuits (remember, I call their beds their "biscuits"), and they finally settled down and started snoring.
The last time I hollered, "Stop barking at the thunder!" it struck me that maybe I'm guilty of the same crime. I started thinking about the number of goings-on around me and the way I react to them, and I wondered if maybe I'm just chasing my tail and barking at the sky in some futile attempt to control what happens around me. And to me.
For instance, one of my friends is enduring a tough time personally right now through no real fault of her own, and I keep offering my (unsolicited) advice for "fixing" what's wrong with her life. I keep thinking that if she'd just take my suggestions, just do these few little things, her problems would be over. I'll even admit that I've been tempted to intercede on her behalf -- just swoop in and clean up the messes in her life, like I'm some kind of glorified Mary Frickin' Poppins dropping in with my magic umbrella and my "spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down". (As if I know better than she what it is she really needs.) However, even if my advice could help her, offering it to her could never make her take it.
The same thing comes to mind when I think of other aspects of my life. When things are tough at the office, whining to my friends (or even, frankly, in this forum) will never make things improve. When my car makes weird noises (like "whinnee-whinnee-whinnee-whinneeeeeee" -- what the hell is that?), I realize that hollering at the hood won't silence the "whinnying". When my neighbors are firing bottle rockets at my backyard late at night, I realize that stomping around cursing in my living room can't possibly make my rude, obnoxious, redneck, mullet-having neighbors actually shove those fireworks up their -- uhhh... anyway, you get the point.
Ahem. [Clearing the throat.]
At any rate, I also realize that when I'm lonely at home, talking to the puglets will never replace real human conversation, and cuddling up on the couch with them won't suffice for intimacy. And last, when my heart and my head are embroiled in battle over love, I realize that my heart screaming at my head will never, ever squelch my brain's little voice of reason. I realize that no matter how loud my heart hollers the we-can-work-this-out protests, my mind will remind me that "wishing away our problems" will never erase them for good. It's all just barking at the thunder, trying to fix what's out of my control.
In fact, my heart and head were embroiled in battle recently, but I'm afraid the war is over. I broke up with my boyfriend on Monday, thus ending my heart's attempt to bury the the little voice that kept telling me that things just weren't right. My heart has admitted defeat. Now I'm just striving to pick myself up, dust off the cobwebs, throw my head and shoulders back, and move on writing the next chapter of my life. Ideally, that chapter will find me a little wiser than the last, and I'll finally learn to stop barking at the thunder. Maybe when the clouds are boiling and the wind is screaming and the hail is pounding, I'll just try to ride the storm out silently, to protect myself from the worst of it, and just keep breathing until the storm passes.