Paws to Heal

It seems appropriate to launch a new site with a short tribute to the process that brought it about. Firstly there is gratitude and secondly and ongoingly, there is transformation.
These two processes not only brought this site into being but are also responsible for almost everything that happens to me.

Sri Chinmoy has taught me the value of gratitude and how it can be one of the most powerful influences in my life. Transformation is a natural process that follows on from then.
At present, I am particularly grateful to those who have encouraged me and assisted me to establish this forum, with special thanks to Sumangali from pure web designs.

When we start thinking about, or looking at things from a different angle, life can seem a little challenging. All the stuff that we have grown up believing as absolute becomes not much more than a shaky framework on which we need to rebuild ourselves with new thoughts and impressions.

Fortunately for me this has been a gradual process with some bursts of overload occasionally from inrushes of enthusiasm at having discovered something totally profound.
I am blessed with a naturally inquisitive mind and I like to see links in nature and things and connections between ideas and events. Life viewed this way can be a smorgasbord of opportunities. This is what I have learnt and this is what it was like for me when I discovered that I needed to practice Veterinary medicine differently for me to continue to be happy.

There is a lot of burnout in professions like mine and sadly there are many of us who do not survive the pressure of demands that life seems to impose on us. The most important thing I discovered was to trust my intuition and believe in myself. This sounds simplistic. In essence it is simple but in practice it is very very difficult to implement because in many instances it means going directly against what we have been taught to believe is the best way to do something.

I have learnt to be less dogmatic. Some people would say that I have just gotten older and with age comes wisdom, but I would like to say that it comes at a price. It often costs us our pride or our ego, occasionally our sense of status or importance and sometimes our relationships. Many of us are not willing to put these things on the line, so not all of us end up acquiring as much wisdom as age. But some of us do and hopefully that is what I am doing. Some of us, it seems, are also gifted with it earlier than others.
I remember back to my early days as a veterinarian, for example, working in a welfare organization where large numbers of animals were destroyed every day for various reasons. There were colleagues of mine even then who quietly rebelled and refused to conduct euthanasia at this rate. Interestingly and sadly perhaps, it took me many more years before I came to my own position on this issue. Ironically, I am now one of the only veterinarians in my country who does not perform euthanasia at all.

There are many such turnarounds or transformations that I am sure we all experience in our lives, some of which we are aware and many we are not. But it is these transformative moments that ultimately reshape our destiny. It seems it is not advisable to ever say ‘never’.

My continuing self-discovery shapes my life and the way I serve others. I hope that similarly, over time, this forum for reflections will bring many new beginnings and stories that may inspire you as readers to think more deeply about the responsibility we all have to ourselves and to all living things with whom we share our lives.

Happy reading, reflecting and beginning.