I was reading Pema Chodron quotes last night and found this. It made me cry:


Quote:
“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World


But what jumped out to me is as I'm reading the story like I always do in puzzles and riddles I'm analyzing from all angles, I'm thinking how can she solve this, and then she sees the strawberries. And I think oh this is what she'll do...she throw a strawberry up on the cliff and the mouse will eat the strawberry and leave her vine alone..saving her from the tigers below.

But when I finish the story, I'm overwhelmed by outcome and the lesson.

Then I meditated a bit about what my thought process was and why. If the woman had thrown the strawberry and distracted the mouse...what kind of life would she have lived dangling from a vine. She might have earned herself a few more hours, maybe the tigers above would have left. My instinct was not to enjoy the moments I had but to plan, scheme and survive. I keep thinking I've gotten to a place of living in the moment and enjoying the moment but I still have a long way to go.

I think the lesson I took from that was that I should see more things in my life as gifts rather than solutions. What "strawberries" am I wasting on things in my life? Am I throwing away strawberries that are there for me to eat?

I know this may sound crazy, but it really spoke to me in a strange way. And my reaction spoke even more to me.