Dear Cali Chica:

Your question in the last paragraph makes me think, once again, of the elk that live around here, and the deer. But the elk are more impressive because they hang around in great numbers, in herds while the deer are in small groups.

So, I walk my loop, no other person in sight and to my left, there is this huge herd of elk, one of them first hears a noise, then alert, it stops eating grass and frozen, it focuses on the noise of me walking. It does nothing else but looks at my direction all through my walk. All of them do eventually, dozens of big animals standing motionless, staring.

It is animal instinct to focus on danger when sensing danger and on nothing else.

Humans’ life is more complicated than elk’s. We have sources of danger appear and reappear all day: crossing the street, driving, people who may turn aggressive toward us at any time at work, or on the street, the day being too cold or too hot, this one person throwing glitter in our face (N) or the other asserting her power in a very annoying way (doctor at the clinic), and memories of past dangers, imagining new dangers. That creates what you are describing, a “constant ‘seeking'”. Unlike the elk who focus on just one sound, one possible danger, we have so many, so we are jittery, constantly moving, looking here and there and way over there and back to here, and what is next…?

This feeling of fear is so very unpleasant. It takes a lot to contain it, to calm it on an ongoing basis, to figure what is clear-and-present-danger and what is not, to prepare for a future dangerous scenario so to be safe when that real life situation does happen, to be prepared.

anita