Be Brave Not Safe

Several days ago my wife (Cindy) got a scare. She was passing through the basement and heard a rustling sound in my office. Thinking one of our sons may have been working in the office, she hollered: “HELLO, HELLO?!?!”

Nobody was there…

She then thought it may have been a recurrence of a situation that happened 10+ years ago when a squirrel managed to get into the house; my office specifically. It tore the place up trying to get out.

Assuming this may again have been the case, she quickly shut the office door and ran upstairs to get one of our sons.

Our youngest son (Evan) escorted her back downstairs to seek out the source of the noise. They found nothing. I heard the story later that day.

The following day, on my way to the office, I heard a rustling sound. Upon entering my office, I could still hear the sound, but it was behind me, in the basement.

Turns out there was “something” inside the bag of birdseed sitting by the backdoor. I called to my wife to share my finding and she agreed that that was the sound she had heard the previous day.

I then took the bag outside to release the uninvited guest and found that it was a mole which had somehow gotten into the house. And, smelling the yummy birdseed, crawled its way into the bag.

Vicious looking animal isn’t it? Actually, our find was only about 2 inches long. And, if you didn’t know, moles do have eyes, but they have very poor eyesight being underground most of the time.

The reality is that this “creature” used its sense of smell to find food. Unknowingly, it became entrapped by the very thing its sense was overwhelmed by. That is, it could smell its way to the food, but could not smell its way back out.

Are we like this? That is, do we get twitterpated over a single thing (thought, idea, emotion, person, event, toy), resulting in a headlong dive into a situation and unknowingly become entrapped by it? Let’s not lie to ourselves. We’ve all done it.

The question becomes: did we learn from it, or is this a recurring theme in our life?

As a fully functioning human being we should use all 6 of our senses. “6 senses?“, you might ask.

I’m not going into psycho-babble here…Yes, we have our 5 “physical senses.” In addition, we have a brain that processes and analyzes all sensory input (what I’m referring to as the 6th sense here) and we can/should use that brain to then make decisions before plunging headlong into the next entrapment.

As outlined in a prior post (Question Everything), we can ask ourselves the following question, as we consider our response to any invitation, opportunity or decision:

In light of my past experiences, current circumstances, future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing for me to do? – Andy Stanley

Moles don’t have the capability to ask such a question. We humans do – if we choose…

Hope you enjoy your day!

p.s. – After releasing the mole onto the snowbank I realized I probably should have executed it, as it is now back to its primary duty of destroying my lawn…