Lizard Brain

I struggle with my lizard brain every day. It seems to consist of a pure biological impetus for survival, having evolved for singular purposes over millions of years. It only knows expansion. It doesn’t understand the modern human world. It doesn’t understand the word ‘enough’. It wants what it wants and it asks me to make it true every minute of the day. It doesn’t yearn for peace, it doesn’t want to consider the needs of others. It rarely wants to do hard things. It wants to hoard resources, it would have sex with everyone that made sense to it. It would steal if it stood to gain from it. It would fight to the death if a big enough threat arose.

To be a healthy, functioning man, I must always maintain awareness of it. I can’t imagine the levels of darkness I might embody if I let it run the show. It has done harm in the past, but thankfully nothing I couldn’t recover from. And yet it is me as much as any other part, and there is no getting rid of it.

The paradox is, I think people that understand what I’m talking about (and still choose paths that are defined by their hearts and souls) are the safest people on the planet. Why? Because, like me, they’ve chosen to keep it at the tip of the metaphorical sword they hold; lit by conscious attention.

At that point it becomes another tool in the toolkit, albeit, a feral one. And that means I’ll always need to pivot to keep it in front of me. I hope you do too.