Heroes Not Zombies

What struck me about this web was how big the spaces were. I think most of the spider webs which I’ve noticed, gazed at, photographed, have been constructed much more densely than this. You know what I mean? A web is just a threads knotted together to create a net…..in other words it’s a collection of holes. I remember hearing a story about an old fisherman being asked how he made his nets, and replying “I just tie together all these holes”, nodding in the direction of an empty bucket with the clear suggestion that the bucket was where he kept all the holes!

So when I stopped to look at this web it was the size of the holes which caught my attention. Why would the spider want such big holes? Wouldn’t that mean that most flies would pass straight through? If she’d made a net of smaller holes, wouldn’t she catch more flies?

Then my mind jumped from the size of holes in a web to the whole idea of sensitivity.

When we are very sensitive to something we pick it up in its smallest amounts. I have certain allergies and it takes only a tiny amount of invisible dust to set my eyes streaming and my nose running. It’s good to have body systems which will expel noxious substances but allergies are a problem…..they don’t protect us from what might harm us but upset us by over-reacting to tiny little things that don’t. The best way I know to deal with allergies, apart from trying to avoid what you are allergic to, is to somehow down-regulate that whole system…..to make it less sensitive. That’s kind of like using a net with bigger holes, isn’t it?

I don’t mean to write a post about allergies today, but as I’ve always sought out holistic solutions, I’ll just say that’s the approach I try to find. The system in the body which reacts to allergens is an integral part of the overall system of defence, repair and self-healing, so paying attention to wellbeing, health and resilience helps to down-regulate the allergic system.

Even if allergies are not an issue in your life, I bet there are many other over-sensitivities or hyper-sensitivities which do bother you. When we allow ourselves to get all het up over trivial little issues, not only do we experience a lot of discomfort but we impair our ability to resolve what needs to be resolved.

As I drove up from South West France to Central Scotland over the last couple of days I listened to an audio book…..John Le Carré reading one of his spy novels. Oh, he’s so good! One line which grabbed my attention was when one of his characters was talking about the art of diplomacy, and said something like, diplomacy is the art of treating all crises as normal and solvable.

Wow! What an interesting idea! How easy is it to turn a small difficulty into a crisis and then to become so overwhelmed by it that we become paralysed, unable to find the solution….worse, even failing to imagine that there is a solution!

A couple of minutes later I passed a van. I don’t remember the name of the company written on the side, but on the back door of the van were the words “Solutions not problems”.

Isn’t the universe an interesting and amazing place? How do these synchronicities happen? I’ve no idea.

But between the novel and the slogan I realised there really is an important message here – don’t set the net so densely that it picks up all the things you don’t want to pay attention to…….a net with bigger holes will only catch the more significant issues. Down regulate the sensitivity settings so that the alarm bells don’t keep going off when there is nothing important to attend to.

Our systems are all interconnected and the feedback loops mean that small things magnify and problems seem to escalate easily. Which is why, I think, it’s important to pause from time to time, to shift our focus, to move to higher ground to get an overview, and allow ourselves to respond to what’s important, finding the solutions to the problems which matter, instead of becoming entangled in the alarm bells of oversensitised defences.

It’s only when we down regulate these over reactive states that we find a sense of calm, of balance, and a flood of solutions which wash away many of the problems.

What do you think? How tight and dense is your net? What’s “setting you off”? Can you down regulate? Can you create a more useful net? Can you choose to respond to what’s important and let the trivia pass on by?

As I write this I’m remembering a book title – “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. I never read it, but maybe it’s about the same idea.