Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

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Photo by Pablo Leal Dominguez - Getty Images

Ceramist using pottery wheel

Ceramist using pottery wheel

Like most of us, Tim learned a lot about who to be from his family. 

When his five-year-old heart shouted, "Jump in the puddles!" his mother warned, "Don't get wet, honey, you'll catch pneumonia." So, puddles changed from fun to health hazards, and his sneakers remained dry. 

And later in church when he clapped and shouted his delight after the choir sang a lively hymn, mom doused him with a bucket of guilt. "Don’t do that in church. It's disrespectful," she admonished him crossly. So, God became deadly serious. Religion wasn't about joy. It was about shame. 

When his adolescent hands spent hours sculpting modeling clay into strange, wonderful shapes, his father warned him, "Best learn something that will make you money, son." 

Stick with Practical? 

So, he went to college to study business. While there, his heart still fancied clay and history, but dad said to stick with what was practical.   

"Don't gamble with your future," he warned. 

So, Tim forgot about rolling life's dice and settled down to settling down. In a few years he became a neat, polite, competent business manager who never took chances and never changed much more than his clothes. 

And his life took shape true to the family blueprint: marriage, house down the block from mom and pop, steady job in a reliable business. No puddles, no expressions of delight in church, no bizarre sculptures or obscure history for the fun of it. Just steady as she goes. 

But "she" went steadily nowhere.  

Anxiety, Depression, Headaches 

Then Tim got anxiety, lots of it. Next, he developed depression. Soon came the psychosomatic stuff like tension headaches and a messed-up gut. 

When he came to see me, he talked about business, family, puddles and clay, but I kept asking him about change. How did he feel about change? What stopped him from changing? 

“So, as a kid, you got the Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! treatment,” I told him at our first session. “You were taught to seek safety, security and certainty above all else.” 

After weeks of reflection, Tim swallowed hard, rolled life's dice and quit his lucrative, safe job and moved from his familiar town to another nearby burg. Everyone except his wife and me told him he was bonkers, that he was jeopardizing his future, trashing a sure thing. 

Tim felt scared but also excited. Sort of the adult version of jumping in puddles. But the fear grew more powerful and persistent, so he pulled back and secured another business position, another nice house, another unchanging existence. His parents' voices echoed in his mind; be careful, don't take chances, enough is enough. 

And then Tim had a dream. He was with his parents in front of his boyhood home. They were frightened because a bear was prowling the neighborhood. They shouted, screamed and ran away, but not Tim. 

"Why are you afraid?" he asked them. "The bear isn't going to hurt you." 

But they ran into their house. Soon the bear was at the door, busting it open. They were hysterical, except Tim. He wanted the bear to get inside. He wasn't afraid. 

"All my life I've been taught to fear change, to see it as an enemy, a threat," Tim told me a few days later.  

"Many of us get that message," I replied. 

"But life is change. If you don't invite it inside, it just breaks down the door," he mused about the dream’s message. 

Tim decided to make friends with the bear. He went back to school to study history and education so he could teach his favorite subject. He began working with clay in a basement studio he built. He grew a beard and gave away his ties. He worried about money and security but decided not to let that run his life anymore.  

Tim doesn't know where the bear will take him next, and that's kind of scary but also sort of exciting. What he does know is that, wherever his newfound freedom leads, it won't be the same old, same old. And that makes him feel more alive. 

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