The Tigers and the Strawberry: When Despair Sharpens Joy

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!'

This Buddhist koan, translated in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, resonates with me this week. The Buffalo murder of ten people by a man driven by hate. The Uvalde murders of 19 children and 2 adults. It all feels like a gut punch that keeps getting worse and worse as more news trickles out.

And then there’s news closer to home – a seemingly minor medical issue that unexpectedly morphs into a summer of surgery and rehab with the potential of disability and death.

On top of the pandemic and the grinding grinding grinding of stressors great and small. Tigers, cliffs, vines, and mice.

Stressors, hassles, resources, and stress.

Psychologists who study events like these use the word ‘stressors’ to talk about the events that require us to use extra resources to adapt and keep going. Stressors can be good – like the birth of a welcome child – or they can be bad, like a death or a medical diagnosis. ‘Hassles’ is a word that has been used to talk about all the little things that eat at our resources when ‘negative life events’ happen. Finding childcare to go to a doctors’ appointment. The itching discomfort of a mask worn too long. Hassles are the mice eating at our vine while tigers prowl above and below.

‘Distress’ is the emotion we experience when the demands we experience are more than our resources can handle. When we have lots of resources – emotional, concrete, or social in the form of help – it’s easier to roll with the punches. We can increase our ability to cope with stressors by spreading out the demands so our resources aren’t all needed at once, by enlisting aid and spreading out the burden, or by increasing the resources we have.

Hence the strawberries.

Strawberries, Stoicism, and mindfulness

Walking with my husband in the woods today, he said what I felt – that since the diagnosis came in, everything seems much sweeter. The birdsong more lovely. The greens that much sharper. The company that much more precious.

Like the man clinging to his vine, the strawberry was so so sweet.

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I was talking to a student a few weeks ago who was overcome with pain. The world just seemed too much and everything she was learning in classes about prejudice and hatred made it worse. It all seemed to be that much more hopeless. Things were bad. Psychology told us why. It didn’t tell us how to help. The emotion she felt was despair.

We talked about building moments of mindfulness into her day. Not candles and music and bath oil. But teaching herself to attend to every small bit of beauty that chanced across her senses. Light on a water drop. A phrase of music. A kindness. A truth.

I told her that’s why I had orchids in my office – because caring for them forced me to look at their elegant loveliness.

And I told her about my darkest time, when I wasn’t much older than she is now but how I still remembered the sense of wonder I had when I pushed the button for an elevator and the door immediately opened. Something good had happened – just as it should have. Something was right with the world. Forty years later, I still cherish the preciousness of that moment and the hope that it gave.

Stoic philosophy – like Zen philosophy – teaches us to attend to small moments that keep us going. Sensations that break through the heavy fog of depression that can drag us down like a sodden blanket. Being mindful of beauty and goodness and truth.

Despite it all.

It is a habit worth cultivating.