The young mountain lions is this video are really close to the size of the one I write about in this post. This is a great little video, and a good reminder not to let your chihuahua out alone if you're in cougar country.
The thing that really struck me, as it ran by, was how much different the shape of a cat was from the shape of a dog. This was all cat, no doubt about it. A big cat. A mountain lion.
I was lying in my sleeping bag, on my side, falling asleep. I was a homeless man, in the summer of 2008, in a patch small trees and brush along the side of the Back Bay, on the very inland part of Newport Beach, California. The well known car dealership, Fletcher Jones Motorcars, was caddy-corner, across the road, 100 yards away.
I heard a little rustle of brush, as I stared off into the small area, maybe fifteen feet across, that was fairly open. One of the larger trees formed a dome over me, I was completely hidden form the path about 15 feet from my head, by a several feet of thick brush. But there was another trail, tramped down months earlier, most likely by another homeless man, straight in front of me.
My eyes opened and I saw three big bounds of a large animal run by, like I said, it was all cat. Definitely a mountain lion, I'd seen them before in Newport. In fact, I probably saw this same mountain lion, about two months earlier, on on Avocado Street, near Fashion Island Mall, and at the Newport Transportation Center bus stop, where I often slept as a homeless man. The young wild cat was about the size of a Labrador retriever in those first two sightings, maybe 35 or 40 pounds. But the one that ran through my camp was bigger, maybe 70 or 80 pounds, about the size of a full grown German shepherd. It may have been a bit smaller than the three young ones in the video above. The distance in front of me was close to the distance in this video when they're drinking, maybe 15 feet away. But there were no glass doors that night, like in the video. Just me, a 360 pound homeless man, in a sleeping bag, lying on a bed of thick leaves. No tent. No fire. I did have a knife, a Leatherman Wave multi-tool, with two quick release thumb blades. I slept with it in case of attack. But it didn't seem much use if that big feline wanted me for dinner.
The mountain lion ran past me, apparently trying to catch a duck at the edge of the Back Bay, about ten feet from my feet. There was a clump of thick brush there, with a little hollow inside, made by an illegal fisherman, or maybe another homeless person. The big feline holed up in there, after it realized I was nearby. It had basically cornered itself, its back against the water. The brush was too thick to creep through on its right, so the way out was the way it had run in, to it's left, past me. I wanted nothing more than to just fall asleep, homeless people weren't allowed to sleep in anywhere in public at that time, during the day, and I was just exhausted.
But I now had a fairly well grown, but young, mountain lion, ten feet away. I was alone. It may have been alone, or there may have been a mama mountain lion nearby. I didn't know. When you're homeless, you know pretty much any kind of attack can happen at any time, especially at night. Police, thugs, other bums, stray dogs, rattlesnakes, raccoons, opossums, bobcats, coyotes, and now... a mountain lion.
Uncertainty. I honestly had no idea if I was going to live to see the next dawn. That mountain lion was definitely big enough to kill me, if it wanted to. But I knew humans are standard prey items for mountain lions. And it was young, the wild version of a big, maybe 12-13 week old kitten. Curious, but still not certain of new things. More than likely, it just wanted to sneak off, after seeing the big, odd animal nearby, me. But all that was speculation on my part. I had no fucking idea what it would do. Again... uncertainty.
As humans, we like certainty, we like things that don't change. But, we all live with many things we are not sure about. But I wasn't sure if I was going to be killed by a large predator that night. That's a far different level of uncertainty from, "I can't remember where I put my car keys," or other questions that happen to all of us.
The world's getting crazier and crazier these days, on many different levels. Over the past several months, as the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown freaked out my friends online, and nearly everyone else, I've seen more and more people stressing out over the many uncertainties in their lives. Will I catch the virus? Are my kids safe? Can I let them play with other kids? Will I get laid off? Will I be able to pay the mortgage or rent? Will this end soon? Will I be able to make back what I lost in the stock market? Will my grandma or grandpa get the virus in their nursing home? Will I go insane staying at home for two or three months? Will there be another shutdown?
Suddenly, people whose lives seemed quite stable six months ago are now living with a wide array of uncertainties. How does each of us cope with this?
As luck would have it, I happen to have a lot of experience in dealing with uncertainty, like that night with the mountain lion, above. Between years as a taxi driver, struggling to pay $550 lease every week, while living in my cab, and then as a full blown homeless guy, I've had to practice dealing with uncertainty more than most people. Here's what I've learned.
Uncertainty is usually anxiety about something that might happen. That's something that's happening in your head, not out in the physical world. Most of our troubles as humans are when we let our imagination run wild, in a bad way. This can be reliving something that happened in the past that really bothers you. You just replay that old memory, beating yourself up, wishing something better had happened. Or, you worry about something the might happen in the future. In today's world, worrying about how to pay next month's rent or mortgage is a big one right now, for millions of people. So how do you deal with that.
Since it's really a mental thing, the best action I know is to bring yourself back to the present moment. Stop for a minute. What's happening right now, this moment, you read this? Do you have a place to live right now? Where are you? Sitting in a chair, the car (watch the road!), a bus, a train, the office? Reach out and touch something in your immediate environment. This is right now. Are you comfortable? Can you stand or sit in another position, if you're uncomfortable. How is the temperature? Can you warm up or cool down if you're too cold or too hot? Are you hungry? Is there food available? Can you get something to eat or drink if you need to? If you answered "yes" to most or all of those questions, then your "right now" isn't really that bad. Maybe not great, but not that bad. And that's the point. Your present moment, your "right here, right now" is usually not that bad.
What's freaking you out, the uncertainty is about something that hasn't happened yet. It may never happen. It probably won't happen the way you think it will. Now take a slow, deep breath. Exhale S-L-O-W-L-Y. Now, can you cope with what's happening right this second? You probably can. That's a good starting point. A lot of crazy stuff may be in your future, but it's not here YET.
Once you break the spell of the negative thoughts for a second, you bring yourself back to the present moment, for the most part. You may not be fully engaged, but you realize you can stop the thoughts that are bugging you, at least for a few seconds. This is a practice, it's something you get better at if you practice it consistently, over time. You can do it any time that you can catch yourself freaking out.
Once you get yourself into the present, paying attention to what's happening, "right now," you can step back and take a better look at what you're worried about. Do you have a big decision to make soon? Do you have to make that decision RIGHT THIS SECOND? Probably not. So don't make it right now. Is there some information somewhere that could help you make a better decision? Then go find that information, if possible. Think it through. THEN make the decision, when it actually needs to be made.
Are you worried about paying rent, for example? Do you have to pay it right this second? Probably not. So step back, get out a pen or pencil and paper. Old school. Make a hand written list. What are the possible things you can do if you can't pay rent on time? Can you make a partial payment? Can you talk to the landlord and get an extension? Can you borrow money from someone or some place? Can you do a side gig to make extra money in time? Can you sell something you own to get by (not a child, you may need them later on)? Is there a program that could help you make the payment? List 20 (not 10... 20!) things you could do to make that payment, or work out some kind of plan. List crazy ideas, whatever comes to mind. Then go back over that list. There will probably be some kind of answer that you didn't think about when you were so busy just worrying. Get to work on what seems the best overall option.
We live in crazy times, crazier than most eras in history. There's a 100 year pandemic that's changed our daily lives in many ways. There's a serious economic downturn, which was happening anyhow, and the pandemic made it worse. The remaining parts of the old, Industrial Age society is breaking down, and a new, Information Age is emerging. But that means there's always new technology to have to learn. There are a lot of long festering social issues coming to a head, or about to. There really is a lot going on, from a historical sense. That won't change for a long time. But how you deal with it CAN change. When you're freaking out, try to remember to bring yourself back to this moment, right now. Can you cope with the next ten seconds? The next minute? Probably. Good. Work from there on a better solution for things that MIGHT happen down the road.
That's what I did that night, about 12 years ago, lying in my sleeping bag, with a real, live mountain lion, ten feet away. I could hear it move around in that clump of brush. Neither of us knew what to do. So I brought myself back to the present moment. The young mountain lion was there, but it wasn't attacking me... yet. I grew up watching wildlife TV shows and documentaries. I knew mountain lions don't eat humans as a general rule, we're not standard prey items of them. The rare attacks were usually when people were moving fast, jogging our mountain biking on trails, which triggered the animal's prey response. I was much bigger than the mountain lion, and we both knew that. I was in my sleeping bag, a big, black, lump. It was probably more confused and curious than hungry.
I was pretty sure it was the same young mountain lion I saw a couple months earlier. Those two times, it was afraid of me. That memory might have still been in its brain, tied to my scent. Maybe. So I started talking to it, pretty calmly. I named it Media (pronounced MAY-dee-uh, the Spanish pronunciation), the second time I saw it. It had still had a white ring in the middle of its tail, and "media" in Spanish kind of means half, or middle. For some reason, that popped in my head, so I started talking to Media, the mountain lion, that night. "Hey, Media, I know you're probably freaked out there in the bushes. Me too. I'm kind of freaked out, too. Hey, I've lived a pretty good life, done lots of crazy stuff. So if you want to kill me and eat me, I get it. Hell, I weigh about 360 pounds, you'll be eating for a month..." I rambled on for about ten minutes. Then I was so freakin' exhausted, I laid my head down, pulled the sleeping bag over my head, and fell asleep. Sometimes all you can do is let things play out.
I woke up the next morning, like always, pretty surprised I was still alive. But I was more surprised than usual. I packed up, hid my sleeping bag in the bushes, and crawled out the little hole in the brush that led to my sleeping spot. I walked up the trail, to the little trail the mountain lion had charged in the night before. I saw its tracks in the dirt up to the edge of the brush, and then a much later set, heading out a few hours later. Like I hoped, it waited for me to go to sleep, hung out a while, then snuck out past me. Even the craziest situations usually wind up working out, somehow.
We're in crazy times, no doubt about it. There will be a lot of things we're all going to be uncertain about, over the next several years. The more you get used to dealing with uncertainty, the more you learn to get back to the present moment, the better you'll be able to cope with all the uncertainty ahead.
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