Foxes and fearlessness
(Diary note dated 19th Feb, 2022)
Storm just dispersed. I feel storm is the yawn of nature — as it leaves you can feel it leave, just as you know that yawn is ending looking at a child’s face. The Einsteinhaus at Caputh is resting well, bathed in the stillness of a sunny afternoon. The pristine and delicate wooden structure is, fortunately, still in-tact. There is no electricity for the meantime, but what difference does it make in the heart of a forest with no one around? We take our breath for granted. We often don’t pay attention to the air that enters our nostrils. A tiny bit of air, what difference does it make? — so we think. But we see the power of wind, water and other elements of nature when we witness a catastrophe. How lucky we are that the water in our tea cup isn’t drowning us, the air we are breathing through our nose isn’t havocking our face, the fire we use to cook isn’t burning us down! They are so well-behaved and that calls for my deepest reverence.
I put on some courage along with my jacket in an attempt to go get some groceries. While everything danced wildly during the storm, the entire forest entered into a hypnotic stillness after the storm. Silence of the forest isn’t like the dead silence of an empty room that sits unused for quite a while. The silence of the forest is very alive and nourishing. Though you are fully alone, you feel least lonely. Whereas in the city, amidst everyone, you are least alone but yet feel so lonely. I picked up the bicycle that had been hard massaged by the gusts of wind and went through the forest. I had no idea if the supermarket at the other end of the village was open at all, but it was easier to face the storm outside than the storms of doubt, dilemma and uncertainty inside of me.
A little bit into the forest, I noticed a group of wild foxes. Perhaps they are hungry like me after the storm and are going out to get some “groceries”. Though foxes don’t generally kill humans, their reddish-brown tails glowing like wildfire startled me. Even if I had to run quickly, I couldn’t navigate through the mess of trees that lay on the forest floor irregularly like a large number of unwashed chopsticks that lay in the sink after a big Vietnamese wedding. To be honest I was so frightened that I was sweating through my jacket in the chilly atmosphere. It mayn’t be just the foxes, but the whole episode of the storm also was a bit unusual to me. I wanted to negotiate and tell these foxes that being thin I lack flesh and perhaps I mayn’t be so delicious to them. But will they understand me? They mayn’t even understand German, let alone my English that, in fear, squeaked like a soprano.
At that moment, I experienced something very strange. It is like walking towards the edge of the cliff and realising that there is a firmer ground beyond it. If we manage to sit with our fear embracing it tenderly (though in my case, it wasn’t a conscious decision but an accident) fear reveals the comfort and hope that lay beyond it. I suddenly discovered the truth of fearlessness within me. Perhaps the truth of fearlessness and other wondrous insights have been long chasing us, but in the hurry of daily life, we always outrun them and never end up meeting them. And then we go to the temples and whine for the truth to be revealed.
Yet in the presence of the foxes, when the moment to run for life arrived, I ironically stood still. I felt that the entire forest that nourished thousands of birds, foxes and other animals would certainly take care of me. The forest’s love is endless. I suddenly felt that I will enjoy being devoured by the group of wild animals and lay in the ground of the forest than die slowly, each day, being killed by the foxes of anxiety, consumerism, societal conventions and harmful ideologies. It was a very liberating moment for me! I cycled ahead, thereafter, with calmness and strength as the evening sun continued to shine…
