Like some people, I don't go to movies anymore. Their sentimental "happy ever after" message no longer rings even slightly true to me, given what I see in the world. But I guess I still have the same youthful weakness for that plucky hero who overcomes odds.

Recently all that got triggered by seeing a song sparrow on my front railing, hopping around on one leg because the other was twisted and drawn up under it. I had been putting food out for (presumably) this sparrow for months, in another little bit of sentimentality, my little resistance against the cold rules of Mother Nature. And suddenly it shows up crippled. I couldn't believe how devastated I felt – here I had been watching all of the bad news online – the bombings in Gaza, the atrocities in Iraq, the finger-pointing and violence in Ukraine – and I'm brought down by a tiny sparrow that looks like it wouldn't last out the day. Must've been caught by a cat then got away – how will it survive with one leg and no hands?

...And yet it has been coming back for almost 2 weeks now – I've vowed to keep food on that little railing constantly, instead of just in the mornings, and I put out water in case it has trouble finding that. Watching every morning to see if it comes back today. All the while chiding myself on being so soppy, as if this bird has much of a chance in the world. But I sit with my coffee and I watch it hopping, balancing itself on one leg, snapping up crumbs and resting briefly while it eats – then flying away to who knows where during the day, coming back from time to time to feed.

And this seems a perfect example of the conflict in the human soul (or heart, if you're atheist): when it comes to the general, we can be complacent about death and destruction; when it is right in front of us, we fight for the last little creature. It's the same irrationality that causes so many families to lose their fortunes trying to keep grandma alive. It's the same heart outreach that causes people to spend hundreds of dollars to rescue half dead dogs from animal mills. And these days it is the same spirit that guides many of the activists who are screaming about the deaths of species that everyone knows are basically doomed.

My thoughts run in two directions with this. The first of course is practical: how do I handle my own heartbreak so that it does not knock me dangerously off balance? The second is related but more general: how do we humans learn to recognize where our responses to the world come from so that we can use the positive energy and yet avoid a full-blown rush to insanity that ends up doing more harm than good?

Because I don't think it's worth living if we do not have that outreach of the heart, that empathy that wants to relieve suffering in others, however small. If it were only that simple! In my more than five decades alive, I have found that even what seems a straightforward good deed often carries harm with it – unintended consequences or complexities that were not thought through. Anybody who follows the various political struggles that have seized the Middle East and other parts of the world where countries had been carved up by European and American allies after World War II must recognize that modern conflicts have long historical sources. (Not that the country boundaries that were created were done for altruistic reasons – but it certainly seemed at least that the Jewish state was an attempt at reparations… I'm not gonna go there but hard to see how that turned out well.)

My experience is that these sentiments pop-up full force and like a seesaw, pitch us up-and-down from one state of mind to another. I have so many times told myself there is nothing I can do about some forest creature or some dying plant – only to rush out a half hour later and do all sorts of things to try to keep it alive. I have done many similar quixotic projects, writing to senators etc. to try to influence something that very clearly I had no influence on. And as I hit my own Peak Energy, I have had to reassess what I am able to do so that I still have time for the basics in my life, since I now live much more manual lifestyle. Not to mention, after so many years experience, I know for a fact that what I am doing has very little probability of succeeding – it's not someone telling me, it's my own history pointing out that it's basically a waste of energy. But there is an entire grief process that goes with accepting that small fact.

And what is not always recognized is that the same impulse that drives empathy or a desire to help can flip flop and turn into a desire to hurt when we perceive a villain behind the problem. This is especially true when we perceive that the victims are helpless. Sometimes the facts are clearly indicating this, but we still put an extra punch behind it, based on our history and our own inner impulses. So being an impulsively caring person has a dark side, one that we're not quite so quick to acknowledge. I look at many of the protests in the world, and the times when they take a violent turn, when the frustrations of the protesters bubble up and spill over, most of the time causing destruction and pain only for their neighbors rather than the actual real villains – an example of how unrestrained impulses don't accomplish what we want. My sense is – as this world gets more difficult, as resources disappear and people get more frightened – this kind of situation is going to increase, and it has become critical that each of us learns to stay in balance when emotions are triggered.

There is a good audio lecture about this by James Hollis, called "When Good People Do Bad Things" and the link is here. (He actually starts the lecture at about 10 min into it, so you can skip intro bio if you know of him).

So what is needed to balance the heart and the mind? How do we know when we've lost all perspective and may be doing more harm than good? Do we even know the motivation for our good deeds? This is where self-knowledge becomes critical. Finding out what it is the drives your impulses, your emotions – the part of you that seems to be acting without consulting your conscious self. I've spent years working on this, and it is a vast unconscious Ocean – I have barely gotten the hang of some of the tides and the surface creatures. It has been a painful journey, but as these challenging times bring up more and more tough situations, I can see that I have made progress in recognizing impulses that come from old childhood terrors, impulses that come from that wonderful part of the heart that knows we are all One, and impulses that come from a more prosaic desire to help those who might help me in the future (and visa versa – protecting myself from potential enemies). And I have developed a routine for stopping myself when I feel an impulse, questioning that impulse and my emotions at the moment, comparing it to other impulses in the past, and getting a bit more to the root of what is happening.

An example recently is a neighbor who has been exceedingly obnoxious, letting her goat and sheep strip and break my sapling trees and break my fence in two places, then blowing me off, saying "they do what they want." And then she filed a lawsuit to take back an easement across her property – one so badly written that because of a typo it claims to own my property, and has forced me to spend money I don't have to make a legal response so that she doesn't win by default. Of course, I was irate, and my first angry thoughts was to get back at her. In the past, I have been a real witch misspelled when people do this kind of obnoxious crap, so it took a lot of effort to stop myself and to ask if it was worth escalating the fight. This is a woman who is impaired mentally after years of substance abuse and she actually was shooting herself in the foot with the lawsuit because it says the opposite of what she told me she wanted to accomplish – so I realized she wasn't necessarily trying to shaft me. It took several nights of pacing the floor, breathing deeply, stepping back from the immediate situation, recognizing my old childhood fears of being attacked and stolen from, (because I had grown up with bullies and with rather thoughtless adults around me) to get at the heart of the matter – that I legally needed to defend my property from her typos. I have done that, and I'm not sure what comes next, but the important thing for me was that I had more control over my impulsive responses than I would have in the past, due to years of practice. I have managed to speak to her in an even tone of voice even when she is being rude, because I want to act in a way that I am proud of. This way, no matter what the ultimate outcome, I will not have my own beastliness to look back on. And I am also better prepared to respond to what ever irrational things she does next because I am more emotionally balanced and thus more flexible.

As much as our culture worships and encourages those who "beat the villains at their own game", I believe our declining civilization will bring many instances where something goes wrong and we can't really fix it, and we must adapt, and that will bring a sense of shame only because our culture is fixated on heroes. And that is an attitude we have to question and perhaps abandon before it trips us up (before trips us up any further, I mean). And so the situation with my neighbor might not appear make me look heroic, and some of it might be out of my hands completely, but I am trying to stay clearheaded and accomplish the things that seem most essential in the situation.

And this is also true in the case of that sparrow – while I am putting out food and water because it still seems able to feed itself, I am not taking it inside to try to nurse it back to health. I know that keeping wild birds is quite futile, or at the very least cost quite a lot of money for one tiny life. I can certainly understand the wildlife places that are trying to save endangered species one animal at a time, but there comes a point where we have to accept that death comes to each individual and it's not ours to determine when. Yet kindness is not misplaced.

In case anyone is working on self-knowledge of this kind, I will say that my routine includes writing down my thoughts and feelings without judgments, letting it flow as I come to grips with whatever situation it is. I also write down any past memories that come up in the middle of it all, anything that seems to be related or similar. I make note of what I have done in the past and the results. I also often write down who the person involved reminds me of – that is often a clue to triggered emotions that are not necessarily applicable in this case. I often write down dreams that come up during this period. I make sure that when I'm doing this investigating, I am not a harsh critic – this needs to be the kind of questioning a gentle mother would do for a child. I am trying to get the truth of the matter rather than trying to find blame. I think that's really important in many cases. I sometimes draw or at least scribble, in an effort to capture the emotion that doesn't really have words, which is quite often a big piece of the situation. As silly as that seems, the image does sometimes give me insight and also it does seem to relieve the pent-up feeling so that I can more calmly assess what's going on. I try very hard not to react in the moment if it can be helped – I try to take time and ask myself what I really want, what will be most helpful in the longer term.

In many ways, this process is also very helpful when green wizard problems show up – because in order to do our best in solving a problem, we do need to keep our balance and not act out of old fears and daydreams. As our culture, our ecology, and our lives become more unpredictable due to the imbalances that have been set in place, it will be even more important not to make things worse by reacting impulsively and emotionally.

If any of you have ideas about this, or hints about how you deal with it, I have opened a forum topic on our forum and let's discuss it!

Emotional Prepping