What else is here?
Have you ever had a moment where you realized there’s a whole world around you that exists completely outside your awareness?
A bobcat kitten has now appeared three times in our yard. Wild animals don’t normally come close to the house, so it was a bit of a shock to see one.
The first time I saw the kitten, it was climbing through the wooden gate onto the pooI deck to where the roses had become wildly overgrown.
I couldn’t resist following it - wouldn’t you have wanted to do the same? I had to force myself not to reach through the tangle of rosehips and pick it up. It was just a little kitten, after all.
I've been surprised at how relaxed the kitten seemed as it casually moved through our human habitat. It was just surveying the landscape, clearly not wary or in distress. Where was its mother? Was she lurking nearby, waiting to leap over the pool fence and pounce on me? I wondered where my two cats were.
As I moved closer to the kitten on the pool deck, it backed up into the rosebushes, climbed over the little fence designed to keep frogs out, then disappeared.
Yesterday, it appeared again, casually walking along our driveway. And this morning it was wandering through our front yard.
Living in the country, we see a variety of wildlife: does with their spotted fawns, rabbits, foxes, eagles. We’re fortunate enough to have woods, grassy fields, and a gently flowing river that they all seem to have claimed as their own territory.
Until the kitten showed up, the possibility of a bobcat living on our property seemed highly unlikely. And yet, the proof kept appearing.
Seeing that little kitten made me wonder: how much of the world around me exists completely outside my awareness?
I don’t know whether there’s been a bobcat family living nearby all along, moving across the landscape as we carried on with our lives. Maybe they’ve passed within a hundred feet of us without our knowing.
But not seeing them didn’t change what was here. It changed what I knew was here.
It made me realize I’d fallen back into seeing only what was familiar: a yard, a field, trees, a bird feeder, a road.
My expectation of seeing only what was familiar had begun to define my reality.
When that bobcat kitten looked out at me from behind the roses, suddenly my familiar world got a lot larger.
It made me wonder how often this is happening to me in less obvious ways. What else is present that I haven’t noticed? And more than that, what possibilities exist beyond the ones I’ve been considering?
What’s happening beneath the surface of what appears to be an ordinary day that my habitual attention keeps me from seeing?
I used to think that discovering something new required going somewhere new, learning something new or searching for something I didn’t already have. But with the arrival of this little bobcat, I realized that discovery doesn’t always require any of that. Maybe it requires being less certain about what I assume is already here.
Before that little bobcat appeared, my yard was just the same yard I looked at every day. Nothing looked particularly mysterious. But now, when I look outside, I find myself wondering what else is there?
Not only where that kitten is. But what else is out there, just beyond the habitual boundaries I’ve adopted. And whether the same thing might be true of the rest of my life.
A bobcat kitten has now appeared three times in our yard. Wild animals don’t normally come close to the house, so it was a bit of a shock to see one.
The first time I saw the kitten, it was climbing through the wooden gate onto the pooI deck to where the roses had become wildly overgrown.
I couldn’t resist following it - wouldn’t you have wanted to do the same? I had to force myself not to reach through the tangle of rosehips and pick it up. It was just a little kitten, after all.
I've been surprised at how relaxed the kitten seemed as it casually moved through our human habitat. It was just surveying the landscape, clearly not wary or in distress. Where was its mother? Was she lurking nearby, waiting to leap over the pool fence and pounce on me? I wondered where my two cats were.
As I moved closer to the kitten on the pool deck, it backed up into the rosebushes, climbed over the little fence designed to keep frogs out, then disappeared.
Yesterday, it appeared again, casually walking along our driveway. And this morning it was wandering through our front yard.
Living in the country, we see a variety of wildlife: does with their spotted fawns, rabbits, foxes, eagles. We’re fortunate enough to have woods, grassy fields, and a gently flowing river that they all seem to have claimed as their own territory.
Until the kitten showed up, the possibility of a bobcat living on our property seemed highly unlikely. And yet, the proof kept appearing.
Seeing that little kitten made me wonder: how much of the world around me exists completely outside my awareness?
I don’t know whether there’s been a bobcat family living nearby all along, moving across the landscape as we carried on with our lives. Maybe they’ve passed within a hundred feet of us without our knowing.
But not seeing them didn’t change what was here. It changed what I knew was here.
It made me realize I’d fallen back into seeing only what was familiar: a yard, a field, trees, a bird feeder, a road.
My expectation of seeing only what was familiar had begun to define my reality.
When that bobcat kitten looked out at me from behind the roses, suddenly my familiar world got a lot larger.
It made me wonder how often this is happening to me in less obvious ways. What else is present that I haven’t noticed? And more than that, what possibilities exist beyond the ones I’ve been considering?
What’s happening beneath the surface of what appears to be an ordinary day that my habitual attention keeps me from seeing?
I used to think that discovering something new required going somewhere new, learning something new or searching for something I didn’t already have. But with the arrival of this little bobcat, I realized that discovery doesn’t always require any of that. Maybe it requires being less certain about what I assume is already here.
Before that little bobcat appeared, my yard was just the same yard I looked at every day. Nothing looked particularly mysterious. But now, when I look outside, I find myself wondering what else is there?
Not only where that kitten is. But what else is out there, just beyond the habitual boundaries I’ve adopted. And whether the same thing might be true of the rest of my life.