A Turkey Visitor Provides Food for Thought

On March 27th, I was up early working at my computer with my balcony door open (which is pretty usual—I like lots of fresh air). I kept hearing what sounded like a turkey gobbling coming from down the street, but told myself it couldn’t be so, could it? It could have been a very weird dog.

The gobbling got closer and closer until it was coming from right in front of my house, at which point I had to get up to go check it out, because now it sounded unmistakably like a turkey. Sure enough, there in my front lawn was a young-looking turkey, strutting around. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, though, it whisked around the corner into my side yard. I never realized that the land speed of a turkey was so fast.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs, then snuck quietly out the back door. It tried to come into my back yard but was foiled by the iron gate. When I came out, it turned around and headed for the northwest corner of my yard. I got a few pictures, one that isn’t very clear at all, one under the redwoods (taken through the iron gate), and a couple that I took by swinging wide and around the redwoods after it flew to the back fence. Then it spread its wings and flew away, rather gracefully and effortlessly for such a large bird.

I believe that, if we are alert and pay attention, information flows to us (and from us, but that’s not the topic today) all the time. This information can be in the way of messages to warn us, guide us, or otherwise inform us. These messages came come in any form, such as billboards that catch our eye, a stranger making a comment that catches out attention, and so on.

Especially, I believe that when we see animals, those animals bring messages of some sort. (Even animals who are in our lives every day, such as cats and dogs and even goldfish.) So my normal reaction when seeing an animal is to reflect upon what the message is that is being brought to me. I always get something interesting.

Somehow I failed that process this time, at least in as far as reflecting on it immediately. That might be in part because I just don’t know what to make of the turkey as a messenger. The usual animals I see, I tend to know their messages (hawks, hummingbirds, crows, and deer appear to me often, for example). But a turkey—? I was clueless.

This morning, however, I awoke thinking about it, and decided it was time to complete the process. After some Googling and reading, I found this Web site that seems to summarize most succinctly the turkey’s meanings (it also plays a nice little sound file of a turkey’s gobble).

After reading the various pages, I turned inward and asked my inner self what the meaning was for me. I got something related to the posted meanings, but personal for me, which is exactly perfect—to be meaningful, a message must be personally tailored to the individual it is meant for. Cookie-cutter symbolism, where a dog is said to mean the exact same thing to everyone, just doesn’t go far enough. It is a start, and that is all; it is up to the recipient of the message to get the gist of the message as it was meant for him or her.

The point of this post is not just to share my own experience, but also to encourage others to be alert to messages from the world coming their way. Being open to such messages enriches life immensely, and can help each of us make better, more informed choices in our lives.

Recognizing the Truth

In searching for another topic entirely, I came across the definition of the new term, fisking, which means to take apart someone’s argument point by point.

Any well-educated person will recognize that this technique has been around for many thousands of years longer than the new name for it. It used to be called rhetoric. But perhaps the term Rhetoric has fallen out of favor because it has gotten a bad name; nowadays, I only hear the term used contemptuously, dismissively, meaning that whatever is being labeled “rhetoric” is hollow, meaningless, with no real power of conviction or persuasion. Pretty much the opposite of what it used to mean, in fact.

Intrigued, I pursued a few links and ran aground at one Web site where there was a bit of a flurry over the fact that Robert Fisk himself was quoted as stating that he never used the Internet (”I have to be honest,” he said, “I don’t use the Internet,” it having become “a hate machine for a lot of people”), not even email, he said, and yet, one commenter at that Web site pointed out that in an article that predated that statement by two years, Mr. Fisk had spoken of having received an email. The Web log writer then stated that Mr. Fisk said that email was being forward to him.

My instant question to myself was, How are those emails being forwarded? Are they printed out and delivered as paper mail? Or are they forwarded by email? In any case, who reads that forwarded email? Mr. Fisk himself? Or does someone read them aloud to him? No matter what the answers are, he can’t truthfully say he doesn’t use email. Even if he reads printouts of email, or has someone read them to him, he is still using email.

Maybe in his mind, he has a very precise definition of what email is and isn’t (like Clinton’s definition of sex), and therefore he can with ease say he doesn’t use email since he doesn’t–what? Compose it? Read it on a monitor screen (if he has it printed out for him)? Or maybe he was just speaking carelessly, in which case one hopes he is more careful with his facts otherwise.

What to do with Criticism

Normally, when someone (let’s call them person A) says something about someone else (we’ll call this person B), our tedency is to believe it without questioning it. But this isn’t always the right thing to do.

The people listening need to examine the situation and the people involved to decide what is really going on. It is possible that what person A said has nothing to do with truth. But how does one determine this?

The formula for examining and evaluating such statements is that there are several things that could be the truth concerning what person A said about person B:

a. It could be a true and honest communication from A about B.

b. It could be person A’s misperceptions or misunderstandings based on any number of things: Just not looking at what is really going on, problems in person A’s communication ability (including problems in hearing what was really said), different beliefs about reality (“if you do that, that’s a sin!”), and so on.

c. It could be person A’s agenda, conscious or unconscious, getting in the way of person A’s ability to truly see or at least honestly state what is there, so that what is communicated has everything to do with the agenda and nothing to do with the truth, or has so little truth in it that it will take some digging to get to it. (An agenda is where a person has an ulterior motive for saying or doing something, such as to make themselves feel better by putting down or discrediting a person who threatens them. People with agendas are seldom utterly truthful; at the very best, what they say is incomplete and biased in favor of their agenda, and at worst is a complete lie)

Understanding Denial

People in denial often state their denials in this form: “I’m not ___” or “I do ___,” when in fact they are ___ or they don’t ___. For example, someone might say, “”I’m not the kind of person to find fault” when in fact they are always finding fault with others, or “I always tell the truth” when the truth is a rare thing coming from them. These statements often accompany the action they are denying. For example, someone might say, “I’m not the kind to find fault, but didn’t you think that Suzie’s dress was a bit lacking in taste for this event?”

The reason for this is often that they are in denial about that aspect of themselves; in fact, that is exactly what denial is: Saying that something isn’t so when it is, or saying something is so when it isn’t. And yet some healthier impulse urges them to state the denial as its opposite, giving them a chance to look at what is inside, and giving others a heads up about what is really going on. If others hear someone starting to say, “I’m not the sort to find fault, but….”, then they know that whatever follows is almost certainly the person finding fault with someone, and they also know that almost certainly finding fault is a characteristic of that person.