Have you ever thought about how you won the genetic lottery, out of one egg and 250 million sperm you got to be you? One sperm different, whoops your sister of brother got it.
So, here we are. Now we wonder what to do. “Why are we here?” We ask. “What’s my purpose?” I wrote a little story with that in mind.
I see that right now, Where Tigers Belch is available for free on Kindle Unlimited. (They choose when it is free. Otherwise, it costs $2.99.)
I revamped it and re-submitted it. It is titled Where Tigers Belch. That’s the spot where you find your purpose, your reason for being.
Pretend you are in a bookstore, and you pull Where Tigers Belch down from a shelf and begin to read:
Introduction
You might have read Paulo Coelho's book, The Alchemist, where a shepherd boy begins a quest to find a treasure and something he calls his" Personal legend."
Here is another quest as a young college student sets off into the jungle to find her purpose and reason for being. And she declared it would be where the tiger's belch that she would find it.
Have you ever had one of those days where you felt off? You were out of sorts, irritable, thinking nothing was going right? You were mad at the world and mad that things weren't going according to plan. You were angry that you aren't further along on your enlightenment trail, wondering what enlightenment is anyway.
You could search for years and never find that spot where the tiger belches, where you are calm and believe all's right with the world. It is the place where you feel invincible.
I understand the gap. Best to back off. Go into your hut, nap, pet that baby cheetah on your bed, and listen to it purr. (I've heard that they have a purr like a lawnmower, and if they lick you, your skin will feel like it has been sanded.) Decide at that moment that you will be fresh tomorrow, and you are not going to push it today.
I've decided that tomorrow I will take my backpack. I will add a few bottles of water and a couple of sandwiches and set off to find my destiny.
This is the purpose of Where the Tigers Belch. It is an investigation into finding our purpose and learning that we are magnificent beings on the road to greatness.
We're not on safari here, although I wish we were. We're here to find the spot that lights our fire. That's where the tiger belches. I could say sleep, lies down, or roars, but I like Abby's lyrical poem, so I'm saying, "Where it belches."
While in Africa, Martha Beck found herself in an awkward and dangerous place. She was between a Momma rhinoceros and her baby. Standing there looking at an animal the size of a Volkswagen bus, she experienced a strange phenomenon. She was frightened, yes, but she was also elated. She was at a place she had dreamed of since childhood, and at that moment, that rhinoceros represented her one true nature. She felt that, somehow, she had come face to face with her destiny. (Between a rhino and a hard place?)
Perhaps that rhino was a talisman for her, a representation of what she could become: big, strong, able to overcome obstacles, that thing that both scares us and elates us. We hope we live to tell of it when we find ourselves in that place.
Being at a spot where a tiger belch has a gentler ring than coming face-to-face with a rhino. The purpose is the same. However, which would you rather face, a wild tiger or a wild rhino?
I don't think we can take credit for all we have produced, for I believe in muses and divine intervention. However, we can take credit for searching. I search for my figurative or literal spot, where the tiger belches.
Come along for the hike.
Chapter 1
You might think I spent the night quivering in my debris hut, listening for the footfalls of wild animals.
I did.
I'm joking. I slept like a relaxed dog with all four paws in the air.
I was on a mission and wouldn't let a minor inconvenience stop me.
Ahead was the goal of my life.
I spent yesterday walking, but when a washed-out area of the path dropped me in an avalanche of mud, I slid downhill screaming and grasping at the vegetation alongside my slippery slide. My careening stopped short of a stream, thank heavens, for my hands were scraped and my throat dry from the screaming, but I survived to the tune of the screeching and flapping of a great flotilla of birds filling the sky in a paint brush smear as though I had touched the brush to every color on my palette.
I washed my hands in the stream and ate one of the tuna fish sandwiches I had placed in a plastic container to keep them from getting mushed. I drank my bottled water and gathered sticks and debris for an enclosure where I spent the night.
Now you might be waiting for me to fall on my nose, and I may—I slid down the muddy slope, didn't I? But what if we travel through life knowing it will turn out well for us?
I crawled out of my enclosure, stripped off my clothes, and bathed in the stream.
Figuring that the stream—which flowed at a pretty good clip—was pure, I filled my empty water bottles.
And when I put the bottles into my backpack, I found a surprise. (Did I tell you I had lost my backpack on the way down that embankment and had to climb, holding onto vegetation for support, back up to get it? I slipped back down again--but I had saved my backpack.) I had used this pack before and had left a pen and a paper pad in its zipped-up compartment—Good. I searched to see if I had anything else tucked away.
I found three sticks of gum, old and dried up, a chocolate mint from a restaurant long ago, melted, flattened, and re-set, but still in its foil wrapper. A few crumbs of left-over peanuts left salt in the bottom of the pack. I dipped a wet finger in the salt and licked my finger. It gave me the taste of having potato chips –a good after-taste to my tuna fish sandwich.
Okay, dry, dressed, fed, and invigorated after that cold bath I began skipping down the new path.
After that fall from the path above, I felt that destiny thrown me onto this path. Besides, following a stream leads somewhere. Water goes downhill, not in circles, as I am apt to do.
What if I get lost, I think as I walk along—a moment of doubt. What if I run out of food or get eaten by a tiger? Well, I'd be dead. I don't know where I am now anyway. I might as well proceed. I'm determined.
I take off my tee shirt, dip it in the stream, and put it back on to cool my steaming body. I sit beside the stream, gather some reeds, and weave them into a ratty-looking hat. It protects my head, and the wet grass helps keep me at a tolerable temperature.
I keep walking; the sun beats down hot, and it is mucky under the forest's canopy.
Occasionally a monkey screams at me, sometimes they sing in a full-on chorus of screeching, but I keep on.
Another night in the jungle? What did I get myself into?
Suddenly I hear someone humming.
Am I coming upon an encampment?
I stop and hold my breath as I peer through the jungle thicket. I see only one hut.
Standing there where I am, hidden in the trees, I see an old woman come out of a shelter. Her white hair frizzes out in a tangle flowing down her back. She is wearing a sarong tied above her bosom. Her shoulders are bare. She ambles, carrying a jug to the stream where she dips it into the water. She hefts the filled jug out of the water and settles it on her hip.
As she is walking back to her hut, she calls out to me. "Why are you standing there gawking? Come on in out of the heat. I've been expecting you."
End of excerpt.
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