Current events in Ukraine are deeply concerning. Many people, even watching from afar, are experiencing a personal sense of threat. Feeling threatened when there is little or nothing one can do in the moment, is unhealthy, even debilitating.
Yet it is important to try to “Keep calm, and carry on.” It is important to somehow reduce the sense of imminent threat. Even if it is not possible to tangibly remove a threat, we can sometimes reframe our perceptions and, by doing so, reduce the personal impact of that threat.
As trivial as it may seem, there is a tool that sometimes works to help us deal with threat.
Hope.
Here is a story that may help:
A gray-haired older man and his grand-daughter are walking hand-in-hand along a trail through the forest behind their home. It is autumn and the leaves are changing colour. The sun is shining with a muted golden light. Leaves carpet the trail and cushion their footfalls. It is an idyllic moment.
Their quiet conversation is interrupted as the stillness of the day is broken by a crashing noise in the bushes up ahead on the trail. Suddenly, out of the brush comes a rabbit, madly running across the path not 10 metres in front of them. It is immediately lost to sight in the bushes on the other side of the trail. Not two seconds later a fox bursts out the same spot the rabbit came from and disappears after it. The sounds of the chase are soon lost in the thick bushes.
The young girl, wide-eyed, turns to her grandfather, shaking in distress and asks, “What’s going to happen? Is the fox going to catch the rabbit? Can it get away? The fox looked very fast!”
The man looks at the girl for a long moment, seeing her upset, wanting to calm her distress, but loving her too much to lie to her. So he tells her a possible truth.
“Well, sweetheart, there is a good chance the rabbit will outrun the fox.”
“After all, the fox is only running for his lunch . . . “