Acting, Reacting and Interacting

Bow reacts to different stimulus in different ways. He gets excited by Lady Gaga, he feels warm affection toward Julie Andrews, he wants to help the dogs catch the rabbits that he sees on the screen. But sometimes he really does just listen to music. For instance, see how he swayed yesterday to the beat of Country Roads -- the Hayao Miyazaki version?

I ran out of space on my iphone, so the camera cut out in mid-dance, but Bow was swaying gently to the music till the end of the song. He gets music! He told me once that he can sing better than I can. I laughed at him, but I think maybe he had a point, though he had trouble expressing what he really meant.  I tend to sing off-key. Bow would never do that, because he has perfect hearing. If only he had a human voice to go with that, he could blow any song out of the water!

I am very careful to try to give Bow a chance to express himself, which means that he can say outrageously improbable things to me, and I will give him what I consider a fair hearing. But in other ways I am very strict with him, in the sense that infractions involving disciplinary issues are not tolerated. It is the way I was raised. I had perfect freedom to express my opinion, but not destroy other people's things or hurt anyone. It is possible to bring a child up to be obedient, but not oppressed.  However... in the "liberal" atmosphere in which we currently live, there are many people have trouble with this concept.

Here is a valuable piece on disciplining children by Leslie Fish:

http://lesliebard.blogspot.com/2014/10/to-spank-or-not-to-spank.html

The issue of discipline goes beyond children to all our relationships. If we want to be able to get along with someone over an extended period, the ground rules need to be set from early on, not just for our own comfort, but also so that the other person can understand foreseeable consequences and make informed decisions. It's not all just about free will. It is also about forced choice.

Here is an article I wrote a long time ago to help my interns learn how to interact with Bow:

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/So-you-want-to-work-with-Bow

The other day I saw a meme that said: "You can't control how other people treat you. You can only control how you react." I don't think that's true. I think that if you wait until somebody does something really bad to you and then react to it, it's too late. You need to help other people control their behavior by heading off bad behavior at the pass. You can't always be reactive.

The reason society has penalties for criminal behavior is not just to punish wrongdoers after the fact . It is also to prevent many others from ever committing a crime, for fear of the consequences.While nobody has a remote control switch to directly control another person's behavior, we all have the ability to change the behavior of those within  our sphere of influence, and if we are doing it right, we are not merely reacting to things we don't like -- we are preventing bad behavior before it even arises.

The interns who did well with Bow were able to project that they were big and strong and somebody to be respected -- even when they were small women and in fact less powerful than Bow. The interns who ended up having to leave were those who made Bow feel that he could walk all over them -- even when they were much taller and heavier than he was. It's not all about physical strength. A big part of it is attitude. And because we never want to have an actual physical confrontation with Bow, attitude is extremely important. It's the difference between being active and being reactive.

Having active control over a situation is like the difference between driving by making wild corrections to the trajectory of your car every time you notice it veering off course and making small, minor adjustments that are barely noticeable, by foreseeing possible difficulties before they arise. Other people are not a car, but a relationship with another person is a situation you can control before it gets out of hand, by presenting the other person with a series of forced choices that keep him on course. This does not mean that you are brainwashing anybody. They still have free will. You are just making it very clear to them what their choices are.

Take that kitten, for instance. It knows that I am freaked out by seeing it outside the barn. I know it must wander around freely all the time, but it is smart enough not to let me see that.

There has been rain every day, and parts of my property are flooded, so I wear big rubber boots.

Yesterday, as I was heading toward the barn, I saw the kitten pop out from under the wall for a moment, bound out toward me, then think better of it, and go back in the barn, to wait for me to open the door. Then it came out and rubbed itself against my big rubber boots.

I haven't done anything to the kitten, and yet somehow it knows how to behave around me. It knows I don't want to touch it. It knows I will only set down the food dish if it backs off a little so I don't make contact with it. It is very affectionate toward me, but it understands my boundaries.

I am allergic to cats, so I simply will not touch the kitten, no matter how weird that seems.

We can control another person's behavior in many ways. If we don't want to be touched, we can move away and send non-verbal signals to the other person to back off. We can control their behavior by showing them how we react to someone else, so they can learn by example and need  not ever be in a situation to receive that reaction from us. And we can control their behavior by limiting the situations in which we interact with them and giving them forced choices about entry and exit.

Have you ever seen how someone lets another person know that it is time to leave without even saying a word? Sometimes they just get up, or even adjust their posture, and the other person knows the visit is over. That is behavior control! You do it all the time. You react to it all the time, when others do it. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and it's just a natural part of how people interact.

If you want to be in control of a situation, you can't always wait to react. Sometimes you have to act before anything bad can even begin to happen. And being a good caretaker often involves realizing that the person you are with does not have complete control over his own behavior. For instance, if you know that your toddler has a meltdown every day after preschool, then it's probably not a good idea to take him to the store after preschool. It's not a matter of discipline. It's just a matter of practicality. You take the child home where he can have that tantrum in his room, because you know the tantrum is inevitable, but the public embarrassment is not.

Managing others means also being aware of their limitations. You do not put a hurdle before a blind man. You don't force a child who can't sit still to attend a lengthy church service. And you can't expect an active post-pubescent male chimpanzee to go a whole day without displaying. So you accommodate the behavior, but you don't allow it to occur in a way that would be harmful to anyone.

Can you  control other people's behavior toward you? Absolutely. You probably already do many of these things without thinking about them. And it's not bad. Most of the people whose behavior you control are probably happy that you are in control of the situation. They would actually be upset or frightened if somebody were not helping them to keep their own behavior under control.

Enjoying the Bounty

Bow is curious and interested in all things. He sometimes takes off my glasses and examines them very gently and then returns them to me. He has electronics, including his own computer, and he can use them. But he doesn't have to. If he chooses not to, that choice is respected.

Freedom of choice is the key. This is true of electronics as well as people. It's not what gadgets we have that determine whether we are happy, but our own ability to turn things on and off at will. It would be terrible to have a television set that you could not turn off or a roommate that you could not ask to leave when you needed to be alone. It's the lack of privacy and the absence of choice that characterize a true prison.

Sometimes I just wish I could put a dome over all ten acres of my land, so that Bow could enjoy it freely. Our life is pretty good. We don't need more. We just need a better way to take pleasure in what we already have.

The blackberries are starting to ripen, and the deer and the rabbits are raising their families here. I have been seeing a lot more wildlife on my property than I have in years past. Sometimes I tell myself that I am simply more observant than I was before, but that may not be the whole story. If there is more pressure on the wildlife elsewhere, they may be coming here seeking asylum.

Yesterday I picked blackberries and brought them to Bow in the outer pen to eat.

Usually, when I bring Bow blackberries, he picks them out of my hand one by one and pops them into his mouth.

But this time he was impatient, so instead he brought his mouth to the blackberries.

He put his lips over the bunch of blackberries in my hand and siphoned them gently into his mouth.

It took  very little time.

Before I knew it, the palm of my hand was empty, and Bow's mouth was full of blackberries.

And then Bow leaned back and relaxed and enjoyed a fistful of blackberries swirling around in his mouth all at once.

Someday, I'd like to see Bow free to wander out there among the blackberry bushes, picking the ripe fruit by hand or by mouth, whichever suits him best.

The other animals on my land are currently enjoying free run of the property. There were two rabbits in particular yesterday that I saw all over the place, romping around and hopping from place to place. They were inseparable.

Even when they knew they had been spotted, they stayed stock still and let me snap their picture.

In the evening, at twilight, after I returned from taking the garbage to the dump, a family of deer jumped over my internal road from the pasture to the lawn and from there into the woods. One of them was smaller than the others, and they actually stopped to let it catch up. But I was not able to get a picture, and just then some rabbits hopped in front of my car on the way from the lawn to the pasture. I had to slow down to let them pass. My property is becoming a high traffic area for wildlife.

As I approached the garage I saw those two inseparable rabbits again, and I got out of the car to film them. The dogs, who are not as free as the rabbits, were barking in protest.

I think that my land can appropriately be seen as a wildlife sanctuary, not because any legal action has been taken to label it as such, but because the wildlife see it that way. A sanctuary is a place where one seeks asylum by coming there of one's own free will, and where one is free to leave also, when one wants to. A sanctuary is not a place to which other people have decided you have to go and  from which you cannot escape once you get there. That would be more like a prison.

Children and  owned dogs have less freedom than rabbits. Dogs have to stay in their master's yard, which is the price of being cared for. Sometimes, strays do have more freedom. My eyes were opened to this when I lived in Taiwan. I admired the strays of Tamsui. The price of freedom, of course, is that no one is looking out for you. But the price of being "safe" is that you have no freedom. This is also the difference between a domesticated and a wild rabbit.

Are you domesticated? Or are you free? Which would you rather be? Every individual has a different answer. Each has a different path to tread. We can no more force someone to be free than we can hope to domesticate someone who does not wish to be.

Can Bow decide where he wants to be once he grows up? I would like to think that he will be able to make that decision. But whatever decision he makes, it should not be irrevocable. Human grown ups make mistakes, too. Sometimes they take a job that they do not like. Sometimes they enter a marriage that turns out to be not so viable over the long term. Sometimes they buy a house that they cannot afford. The good thing about being free is that you can quit your job, divorce your spouse, sell your house, and even move to a different country if the regime in your own country becomes too oppressive. Mistakes can be corrected. The rabbits and the deer, the turtles and the snakes are free to come here, but they are also free to go.  Doesn't a chimpanzee deserve the same freedom?