A movement forward!

The above photos of two squirrels, one a young one probably, were taken during their climbing and jumping exercise in our garden. The two reached the top of a dry branch adjacent to the palm tree. 

The pictures below is that of the adult squirrel jumping to the palm leaves, which came closer to the stem when swayed in the wind. 

The squirrels are fond of the juicy fibrous cover of the Shupari fruit. That was what the adult squirrel was after. 

The young squirrel left alone in the branch, was holding on to it firmly as seen in the following pictures. It suggested that it was still inexperienced to jump to the palm leaves, even if the palm leaves came close to it in the swaying of the wind on one occasion.  

All the above pictures,  of the young squirrel hesitant to jump to the palm leaves,  where the adult squirrel had gone, tell us a lot of the caution with which, the young squirrel approached this adventure. On one occasion the palm leaves were close enough for it to hold on to them and get carried away by the palm. But the squirrel did not attempt it. It was young a squirrel, still learning that its natural habit is to jump distances between branches and trees. 

The adult squirrel not having found the other squirrel reappeared in the scene peeping between the palm leaves to have a look at the young squirrel, still holding on to the branch and not wanting to jump. 

The pictures above of the young squirrel descending the branch and the adult squirrel leaving the palm to join the young squirrel was the last I saw of both of them. They disappeared into the foliage of the pepper plant. 

This sight had a message for me. 

I am young into my retirement experience. It is now three months since I left active professional practice. During this period, I have made some progress to interpret the loss and gain of Ctherecent ten years. 

The loss of a professional space of academic and intellectual pursuit is a palpable reality. I was able to visit the library once a week to spend half a day to read and be familiar with the thoughts and experiences of others. As I continue some professional writing, the loss is not a stress, but an easier transition than I thought. 

The gain during this period is the time I longed for to return to the story of life and the formative journey of the last fifty five years since my college days. I started the undergraduate training in 1967. It was a successive journey into different phases of life with little respite seasons. The times of one month of retreats once in three to four years from 1983 till 2002 had introduced the value of pauses to reflect, revise and renew life experiences. But that rhythm got discontinued since then.

There were some major life events since then, which left stressful memories. An extremely difficult situation while involved with the governing council of an institution, having had to take up a professional responsibility ten years ago, which although appeared to be a good start did not align with the ethos of work that I was keen to pursue and currently a sense of anxiety about the way family life is reduced to a material pursuit, because of which children receive far less parental attention than they truly deserve to live protected from the traction of the external ambience of affluence and contextual morality!

An aeroplane travel six months ago, which made the aircraft to take a detour to make an emergency landing,  due to a serious technical snag, which I later found out was due to a fire in one of its engines, kept surfacing in my mind  recently. Both Anna, and I having experienced  the safe landing of the air craft, live with a sense of gratefulness! We along with three hundred others in the plane were preserved! This too has a message for Anna and myself. 

During the three months, I have made a small progress to revisit these inner upheavals. 

After watching the squirrels yesterday, I was about to return to the cottage, when I noticed movements in the foliage of the neem tree. I spotted a bird and felt that it was intently looking at me! It reminded me of the adult squirrel peeping through the palm leaves to look out for the young squirrel. 

That was a good way of closing the morning birding time.  

The young squirrel was under the watchful eyes of the adult squirrel, when it was not able to move forward!

We are in the watchful radar of a loving God !

In the book, Living Into Focus- Choosing What  Matters in an age of Distractions,  Arthur Boers suggested Bird Watching as a therapeutic activity to counter the attenuation of attention (p 91)! I thought it was a timely advice for people like me, whose mind often is a high way traffic junction of competing thoughts! 

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)