Relational disruptions

All creatures, including us — humans, are born with a set of instincts and rules that we naturally follow. Then we inevitably blend with nature’s frame of other living beings, which process involves many erroring signals altering our behaviour, caused by either misconception of other beings’ fundamental rules or perception of the world. I observe this process as an infinite ripple of behavioural alteration that even gets encoded into our genes with time.

The Misconception Ripple

Cats would misinterpret a friendly-approaching dog, waving its tail as their own body language tells them: an act of aggression. As they frightenedly use their claws to “defend”, the dog is blending with the cat’s framework — they claw you for no reason at all, so they must be bad news.

The World Perception Ripple

Every new generation that gets born into this world has an entirely new perception of things that already exist. Their moves in life don’t always make perfect sense to older people than them, which most of us would consider due to lack of life experience, but those are actually decisions more fit to what they regard with their own eyes. It is actually what we genetically taught them is right — our intuition altering to be more fit to new circumstances!

As most of my fellow cat owners know, we put up with a lot of annoying common traits that our little furry friends posses. Cats are not used to by nature to encounter close physical contact, therefore petting your cat for too long may lead to aggression towards you. There’s also their redirected aggression caused mostly by unexhausted energy, that again makes us their target. Regardless of any of that, we just keep loving our little friends. Our shallow scratches and itchy teeth marks seem like a small price to pay. Casting aside the “love hormone” that our cats release, it’s divine to ignore the faults of our surrounding ones and just return love to them. It is clear to me why this occurs — understanding the misconceptions and steering clear of them in the future!

I often refer all this to the Bible, when during his crucifixion, Jesus whispered:

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

It’s a clear sign that we have oversight on how much those faults would really matter in the far future. The misconception and perception ripples cannot be levelled, but they can undoubtedly be dialled down. The only thing that’s enough is trying to understand what is causing the ripples disrupting our relations.

Thank you for reading!