The Mouse and The Trap

One day, a mouse saw that a farmer and his wife had just put out some mouse traps. In a panic, he ran out into the farm yard and told the other animals of the predicament he and his family were in.

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me; I cannot be bothered by it." The mouse turned to the pig, hoping he would receive greater sympathy, but to his dismay, although they had shared meals and fun in the past, seemed uninterested in his story. "I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse," said the pig, "unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it but pray; be assured that you are in my prayers." The mouse, amazed at the lack of concern among his friends, told the cow, but she replied: "Mr. Mouse, a mouse trap is no danger to me."

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and feeling alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever.

Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. His wife's sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, in fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We go through our days without realizing we are connected – directly or indirectly – to all there is, but the tragedies befalling anyone have the power to create a domino effect that will touch many lives including our own. The larger animals in the story could not be harmed by a tiny mouse trap, but the ripple effects affected them nonetheless.

Regardless of how distant a predicament appears to be, we should never assume we are completely shielded from its reach, as the boundaries we have created could easily fall and leave us vulnerable.

Life is no different than a birthday party – it is wonderful to enjoy our new toys but we would have no fun celebrating alone.

March 25th - What Tomorrow Will Bring

“Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.”~ Brian Tracy


Tonight my parents are arriving from Italy. The past few days have been a flurry of activity in preparation for their visit, and we are all eagerly awaiting to see them. Today, as I was putting in the final touches, I found myself daydreaming about all the wonderful moments we will spend together in the next three weeks, and all I could envision was fun, laughter, and many, many hugs.

Those thoughts triggered a question I my mind – would I look forward to their visit as much if I hadn’t had as nice a childhood as I did? Of course I would still love them for being my parents, but would my expectations of the days to come be the same?

It occurred to me that our expectations for the future are, in great part, directly tied to our experiences in the past. If we had nice, rewarding moments – and are able to connect them to a person or a situation – we are likely to expect that everything ahead is going to be equally rewarding. If, on the other hand, our past experiences were less than desirable, our expectations of our future are probably just as bleak.

We can’t change our past, but we can do something about our present and future. Because of their intimate tie, by changing our expectations of our future, we are able to heal some of the wounds of the past.

Our perception of situations is often connected to our point of perspective at the time of the occurrence. By improving our self-worth and creating rewarding expectations, we can open ourselves to a new awareness, and create a pathway which will allow us to look at our past with a new point of view. Once we examine old hurts with new eyes, our assessment of them is likely to change, thus giving us the opportunity to move past some of our inner blocks.

By allowing the formulation of healthy expectations we give ourselves silent permission to heal and forgive those elements of our past that we weren’t able to reconcile with until now. We may not get what we deserve, at times, but we all certainly get what we expect. So, why not expect the best and enjoy the moments preceding the occasion? We might be pleasantly surprised.

The Child Who Was Saved From Himself

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place." ~ Unknown

Everyone who knows me well also knows that I have three children by birth, and one by soul connection. The latter is the grandson of one of my dearest friends, and somehow, he has always been like a son to me.

As a child, he has always been overly controlled by his mother, and grew up despising authority in every form – in his mind, rules are synonymous of control, and he won’t have any of it. After being crushed most of his young life he finally hit the infamous teen years, and decided he was done with it.

From that day on, he rebelled against everything, and came into constant conflicts with his mother. Suddenly, the subdued little child turned into a punk teenager, ready to fight anyone who got in his way. After he ran away from home several times, his mother decided she was done with him too, and practically threw him out on the street - not before telling him one final time that he would never amount to anything in his life.

He found shelter at his grandparents’ home, and although the original adjustment was a bit rough for all involved, they all finally settled into a living arrangement everyone was comfortable with. During one of the crisis, I told my friend how much I admired her efforts, and her only reply to me was: “Regardless of how he is behaving now, he is my grandson, and I love him.”

Somehow, rather than being swept into the drama of the current situation, she and her husband kept their focus on what was truly important. At the time his mother threw him out, he was a child slightly older than fifteen, freshly dropped out of high-school, with no car, no money, and no job; he was certainly not able to care for himself.

My friend and her husband accepted him for who he is. They never tried to change him, and showed him that love is powerful enough to rise above differences of style or opinion. They both knew that he was at risk of running away again, and would have easily become another face on the list of missing children.

I know there were many times my friend was ready to give up, but if she hadn’t hung on, she would have missed the opportunity she finally had to see her beloved grandson graduate high-school; if she had given up on him, she never would have heard of his current plans to attend culinary school.

When her boy was lost, she turned off her immediate vision of the obvious, and focused instead on the light she knew still existed in him. She fed that tiny light a little each day, until it grew and strengthened on its own. Although her eyes showed her a little ugly duckling, through her heart she saw the beautiful swan hiding within.

She held on to her vision, and allowed time and love to take care of the rest. And a child was saved from himself.