The Blissfully Unaware Chicken

Since I’ve been back at my family’s house for the summer, I found an unlikely source of inspiration - the last remaining pet chicken we have on the property.



The two horses have been moved to the paddock, meaning the chicken and geese have had to be allowed free reign outside, so they won't find themselves flattened by the horses. This inherently allows them to go anywhere; a mile from the house (not that they would give up readily available comfort and food here), or even inside the house (they have sneaked in on a few occasions). Now, we don’t mind this development; in actual fact we quite like having the birds hang about outside, they in fact serve partly as aesthetic features added to the outside area, but, they aren’t the only animals roaming around the house outskirts.




There are four cats and a dog. Granted, the dog is relatively civil towards animals of all kind, but the cats... cats are cats! Isn’t it uncontrollably in their nature to hunt after other animals like mice, rats, and birds?! The two geese are respectably a bit too big to take on, but the chicken looks about the same size as the two biggest cats.

What kind of inspired me about this situation is that the chicken is completely unshaken by their presence - unshaken by 4 masterful, stalking, hunting, killing machines (in-effect, lol). In actual fact the chicken is so dismissive of them, it’s almost dominant of them. You'll find them moving out of it's way instead of visa versa. The chicken surprisingly seems to be higher in the pecking-order.



Admitably the cats are just a bit wary of attacking a bird a similar size to them, and since they get cat food guaranteed like twice a day from us, it’s quite understandable why they won't risk getting injured. However, I was taken not by the chicken's ignorance of the potential danger, but by how this is an asset to the animal. Via obliviousness the chicken is effectively getting on with it's life, rather than living in constant fear. There's an obvious lesson to learn from this...

A lot of us fear shark attacks when we're in deep water. I think it's fair to say most of us have heard on TV and the like, that shark attacks are very unlikely, however I believe still a good deal of us are fearful. If you're quite an overly apprehensive person, learning to let go a bit more would enable you to have a more enjoyable life.



I suppose the chicken is just unaware, not brave or philosophical, but the affect is still the same.
What I’m not saying here is that we should all become anarchists to common sense and cautiousness, but perhaps we should take a think about if we are in fact too cautious in our lives, so much that we don’t permit ourselves the freedom to live fulfilling lives.

The idea is to try more frequently to step out of a subjective look at things, and of course think more objectively. Take a look at authoritive statistics on the likelihoods. We often can wind-up thinking something nasty is more likely to happen then it actually is, and that it's nastier than the reality.

Imagine a person is about to make a speech to about thirty people they barely know. They're very worried about the possibility of completely freezing during the speech or something, and they think that'll be bad because everyone will think of them as complete idiot. But the reality is that they aren't likely to go blank during the speech, especially if they're backed up by some queue cards (for instance), the fear that they'll take looks at the cards and still be completely frozen is just silly and pretty irrational. Even if they find themselves frozen, surely it wouldn't be hard to say something like “I’m so sorry, my minds gone blank, I appologise”. People will be a little taken by that, sure, but not half as much as the person thinks.



If there’s an area in your life that you believe you should relax a little more about, try to act like my chicken! Live more for the pleasure of the moment, and not that the chicken does this, but ease-away all unwanted fears. Learn to be mindful of your present moment, and stop thinking so much about possible hazards of the future, be kind to yourself and wind down a little more.

It'll get easier...

If you persevere with this, you'll turn into a more relaxed person naturally. This is about consciously taking steps to alter your habitual thinking - the brain will be changed for the long term if you keep it up.