When Opportunity Knocks
Milly (botanical name: Rhipidura fuliginosa placabilis) is the only one out and about in the backyard this morning, she flits with great aplomb between the grapefruit and lemon trees, a tactical avoidance behaviour from years of unintentional friendly fire by the feline population out there. She’s chatty.
She tells me that her great aunt is visiting from Puketapu (which is more than a stones throw as the crow flies from here). She says she needs the break, her ears are sore!), I laugh because I can relate.
Every year for forever an old aunt of mine has had aches and pains of one kind or another and she loved to tell anyone, anytime who was too polite to leave when they might have had the chance to. I commiserate sincerely, because I was one of those that stayed.
There’s more to Milly than meets the eye, which is always the case when you scratch the surface of someone’s life you’ve been acquainted with for a time and yet never really sat down and had a good yarn with. I realise just now, that talking with Milly is not usually something I would do because she always has her chorus line in tow.
In her solitary state however, she seems somewhat fragile, in need of someone who’ll just listen. So, I try to listen with all the activeness of a child kept inside against their will, for days on end because it’s been raining. There’s no stretch of the imagination necessary here.
Listening is such a whole body experience, and for the most part we do it so badly. Don’t you feel that when we’re required to listen carefully our minds suddenly become flooded with things we’ve previously put off thinking about until there’s a break in the weather and they, for their part, are now itching to get our attention because suddenly they can? That’s when all hell breaks loose!
Active listening then becomes an all out mind-battle. Poor Milly, her chatter is reduced to my struggle to lip-read against the raging war inside my head. Her chatter takes on a colour closely resembling a monotone and suddenly I feel like I’m drowning. Even more suddenly, our conversation comes to an abrupt halt. Milly has to get back. It comes as a bit of a relief to be honest.
Have you ever had days when every good intention you ever had suddenly goes out the window because in the midst of carrying out the good intention, a fork in the road appears and ever so unintentionally everything becomes … about you? How does that happen? Who knows. Why does it happen? Pass. It just does somehow.
Windows of opportunity can be so small sometimes. They can open for just a brief time and then be gone. The window with Milly was surprising when it came and I feel disappointed it might not open again quite so soon. But then, opportunities rarely announce themselves at a time appropriate for us now do they?
Rather they present themselves when we aren’t looking and least able to manufacture our best behaviour, they simply take us how they find us and that, I suppose, is a lesson in itself.
