Pigs & Panic

During a group meditation session, I confessed my wife and I share a mild obsession with pigs. The origin of this obsession will remain a secret between my wife and I, but suffice it to say that from an early time in our relationship, continuing to the present day, the pig has been a symbol of our affection for each other.

Last week we had a room in our house repainted in preparation for the holidays, with guests arriving soon and entertaining throughout the coming week. We had to move everything out of the room, including a bookcase full of books. Books were moved out along with most of the small furniture. We packed all the books into boxes, numbered in order, so we could get them back on the shelf in the same order. There is some rhyme and reason to the contents of this particular bookcase: Storytelling, Italian, and Cooking. The room was repainted and cleaned. Now it was time to put everything back.

I moved all the small furniture back into place and hung all the pictures back up on the walls. Then I hung our two main piggy display shelves and re-installed all the pigs in their proper places. After this was done, I moved the bookcase back in, with my wife’s help, and then carried in the 8 boxes of books and started to replace them into the bookcase, one shelf at a time. As I was doing this, my wife, who was on the phone with my son and slightly distracted at that moment, tried to wiggle by the piles of books and, inadvertently, knocked one of the pig shelves (the smaller one) from its hooks in the wall. She instantly froze, as did I, and the shelf jammed between her back and the wall. In a moment of panic, I got up from the floor quickly and secured the shelf before it could fall to the floor. The day was saved!

Fortunately, this particular shelf had a glass door, so all of the pigs remained captured inside the display shelf and none were broken. However, at the moment I saw the shelf jammed between the wall and my wife, I envisioned what might happen if that whole unit crashed to the floor. In a flash, I imagined the whole glass front shelf crashing to the floor and many of our delicate pigs breaking to pieces. I had a moment in my mind where I wondered if I was ready or able to accept a tragic loss like that. Was I? I didn’t have time to continue that line of thought as I jumped to rescue the shelf before it crashed.

Later, after I had time to recover, letting go of the catastrophizing, releasing the thoughts of doom, and relaxing back into the present reality, I wondered how I would feel if all my pigs were destroyed. How would I have felt if that envisioned tragedy had played out in a different way? Each of those pigs represented a specific time and place in our relationship and, as such, were very dear to me. However, they are just mementos, symbols of the times and places we enjoyed together. Could I still be happy with just the memories and let go of the physical symbols?

Maybe in the same way that we recall a caring moment or our benefactors, we don’t actually need their physical presence with us to re-embody the experience of togetherness.

Each tragedy in life, or tragedy averted, offers an opportunity for reflection and learning.