Recharge Your Enthusiasm for Life! (Don't Be Like Henri)

Watching the antics of the award-winning "Henri the Cat" inspired me to write this post. For your best experience, please watch this two-minute episode: "Henri 2, Paw de Deux."

Do you, like me, see a little of yourself in Henri? If so, you may want to consider how you can stay in touch with your enthusiasm for life!

Like Henri, we can become numb in the lap of luxury, and I don't mean the kind of luxury exclusively enjoyed by the rich and famous. I mean the "ordinary" luxury of clean running water, indoor plumbing and mountains of food within about 15 minutes from our home in every direction. And of course the luxury of a car or bike to get there. If you are in a developed country you have so much to be thankful for.

I live in North America, which by many measures sits at the top of the heap of developed countries if you don't count health care, quality of schools, or social safety nets. And yet I still sometimes wake up and start focusing grimly on my various concerns, or drag myself around in a hangover from the dream state, missing out on the freshness of a new day. I find it essential to have a morning intention-setting exercise – to greet the moment and appreciate another day in the middle of this mysterious universe.

Henri the Cat might find the vastness and wonder of the universe itself to be ample cause for ennui. We are so insignificant!

A deeper contemplation

Yes, in physical size we are beyond microscopically small compared to the immensity of the universe. But why identify with the body when our mind can contemplate the immensity of that universe?

With some perseverance, such contemplation can make the ennui melt away! If we can contemplate regularly, daily, for about 20 minutes, we begin to appreciate the immensity and the mystery of life – both its vastness and its startlingly orderly forms. There is precision, right down to the most microscopic particle.

Everything has been thought of, it seems! Why are there dust motes floating in the warm rays of the sun streaming in the window? Why are there innumerable forms of life and sexuality bursting forth everywhere? Why did life figure out how to survive around the tubes of sulfur water pouring forth from the depths of the ocean? Why bother?

But then . . . consider also every little ant and spider (like the one Henri kills). And even they have parasites crawling around on them. Yuck. So, now my contemplation has taken a creepy turn and I imagine you, too, getting discouraged at the thought of all the ways that life eats itself, which of course includes eating us.

And we know that stars collide and explode and annihilate planets – our own planet is predicted to experience that in about 5 billion years. Destruction on universal and microscopic scale. And for all sentient beings living on this planet – pain, suffering and death, as well as bliss, beauty, discovery, creation, and love!

If we don't get lost in our daily habits, and if we don't just act cute to get cheeseburgers, we can appreciate how wondrous it is that we are expressions of life itself – indestructible in the midst of destruction.

Henri, my friend, you are not merely a cat. You are not Henri alone – you are life itself living in every form . . . including the form of Henri the Cat.

Let go of your habitual thoughts, Henri! Open, and open again, up and outward. Contemplate that there is no outside, that everything you experience exists inside your very own consciousness. Everything is you! Smile! Purrr!