For the past few days Darbella’s been read­ing “The Art of Rac­ing in the Rain: A Novel [Paper­back],” (affil­i­ate link) by Garth Stein, and she passed it on to me.
I’d highly rec­om­mend that you read it—however, you might just pre­pare your­self for a good cry, espe­cially if you’ve loved a dog. I know. Odd, eh?

Any­way, the story is told from the per­spec­tive of an old, and incred­i­bly wise dog. I thought, over the next few weeks, that I might segue off of some quotes from the book. I picked ones that were pro­found, yet needed lit­tle of the “back story.”

Here’s the first:

I sud­denly real­ized. The zebra. The zebra is some­thing inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!
p 292–3 (large print edition)

OK, I lied about the back story… you need some of it to under­stand this quote.

The pro­tag­o­nist is a dog named Enzo. With­out giv­ing up a plot point, he gets left home alone for three days. He sur­vived, but on the third day began to hal­lu­ci­nate. He goes into the daughter’s (Zoe) room, and a stuffed zebra seems to have come to life. It’s danc­ing a malev­o­lent lit­tle dance. Then, the zebra bonks the other stuffed ani­mals, all the while grin­ning at Enzo.

Finally, Enzo decides to attack, but he sees the zebra rip itself apart. Enzo retreats, and soon, his fam­ily returns. There is pan­de­mo­nium in Zoe’s room—all of the stuffed ani­mals are shred­ded. Enzo assumes that the zebra came back to life and destroyed every­thing. The fam­ily blames him. The quote comes from much later in the book, as Enzo real­izes that he, indeed, did the damage.

A key line: “Some­where, the zebra is dancing.”

The demon is us! This is one of those, “OK, I get that about other peo­ple, but… but…” ideas. Now, demon is not being used in any sort of “devil and under­world” way, but rather as a descrip­tor for the destruc­tive side of our natures. The word derives from the Greek dae­mon, mean­ing, “… a dae­mon is some­thing which is not vis­i­ble yet is always present and work­ing its will…that which serves to define a person’s char­ac­ter.” Link to Wikipedia

An apt visual is the guy with an “angel” on one shoul­der and a “devil” on the other. It’s a benign car­toon known to us all. The two, metaphor­i­cally, whis­per in our ears, one urg­ing us to be our best selves, the other urg­ing mis­chief, or mayhem.

This is being human. (And, from the book, being “dog.”)

The voice of con­science and the voice of tur­moil are in us. They are us. Often, in either good or neu­tral times, our “best natures” prevail—we hear the zebra, and ignore it. But as times toughen, and sit­u­a­tions emerge that are charged and fraught, the zebra voice rises to promi­nence, and we want to rip, to tear, to demolish.

And, oddly, if we choose the time and method, that can be just fine.

Many peo­ple have told me that, when they are angry, they want to “break stuff.” I rec­om­mend a heavy bag to punch, or that they climb into bed and pound a mat­tress. Or, that they buy cheap dishes at a Bar­gain store and throw them into a garbage can filled with rocks.

In other words, to deal with their emo­tion in an ele­gant, non-judgmental way.

This is not the norm. The norm is denial and sup­pres­sion. Peo­ple pre­tend that noth­ing of the sort—no destruc­tive urges, (or, we might say, neg­a­tive urges…) exist in them. And the list of neg­a­tive urges might include, for exam­ple, pas­sion and sex­u­al­ity. They deny, they block, they swal­low the stuff.

But, of course, noth­ing repressed goes any­where. Here’s a sec­ond quote:

Sup­press­ing the symp­tom does noth­ing but force the true prob­lem to express itself on a deeper level at some other time. p 69

And that means one of two things: an inap­pro­pri­ate explo­sion of rip­ping and tear­ing, or a redi­rec­tion of the emo­tion into one’s body.

Dar has just come through a 4 week excur­sion into Report Card Hell. Ontario, in it’s “wis­dom,” has yet again changed report card require­ments, and Dar was writ­ing com­ments steadily, every evening for 4 hours, and all week­end, for 4 weeks. I’d see her frus­tra­tion, and do a bit of body­work on her, and she’d get the anger and frus­tra­tion out.

Yes­ter­day, I was hang­ing out with one of her teacher col­leagues, who, dur­ing the same period, has devel­oped pain in her legs. I asked her what she’d done with her anger and irri­ta­tion over report cards. She said she’d pushed through, and then cleaned her house.

I sug­gested she might want to clean out the anger and frus­tra­tion, so we worked on that.

Many peo­ple go the other route, and attempt to redi­rect the repressed stuff into blame, fight­ing, yelling, etc. It’s the “stuff it at work, yell at home, over the cof­fee cup left on the counter” ploy. The anger gets pointed at an object or a friend or a spouse, and a bit of the “edge” comes off.

But at a deep level we know bet­ter. We know we are putting off deal­ing with our own “zebra,” and in a sense this ploy only makes mat­ters worse.

Like Enzo, many see the mess they have made, and whip about, look­ing for, and blam­ing the zebra. Or genet­ics. Or “the devil.” Or the sit­u­a­tion, or others.

The best way to deal with all of this—to deal with what we are cre­at­ing—is to express it, quickly, effi­ciently, and with respect.

By this, I mean that we acknowl­edge what we are doing to our­selves, ask our­selves how we can safely express the feel­ing aris­ing, and then go and do it. And at no point do we give our­selves grief for feel­ing and enact­ing our feelings.

This is only pos­si­ble if we cre­ates for our­selves the safety and clar­ity to express who we are, with­out judge­ment, AND with­out the expres­sion ever being aimed at another.

As above, with the heavy bag, mat­tress, chinaware.

Think about what you refuse to deal with, where you are afraid to go, how you divert your­self, and who you blame when things go South. Deter­mine another path, another way.

Shake your head, stop blam­ing the zebra (the zebra is me, and it’s always danc­ing!) and learn to let go, with­out blame or judgement.

If you need help with this, spend some time with us, or seek out a local, com­pe­tent ther­a­pist!