Dear Sally,

It is clearly the modern way that you can’t live in the moment. You have to get ready for the next thing before you are really in the thing you waited and prepared for. Around here, the Halloween costume stores are open for business. I have taken all the hype and disobeyed it, thrown it out with the dirty dish water. We all have been put on the schedule of the retail world. So, yesterday we made a huge batch of sun tea, hosed off the deck for yet another month of enjoying ourselves and our guests. Summer isn’t over till we say it is. Relax and laugh. Feel the great life you have now. Don’t put it off. It is precious.

Dear Retail Disobeyer,

It’s official. You are the queen of Natural Leadership. I read your letter and went frolicking through the fields in a state of complete joy. Finally, the humans speak the truth!

There’s something very important about the scene you described in your letter: sun tea, the clean deck, laughter. Your body told you that summer isn’t over. Your body told you to stay put. Your body knows better than to start carving pumpkins or planning your Thanksgiving menu. It knows! This is because, like me, you have an animal body inside you that is still quite attuned to the seasons and to the natural rhythms of life. Hats off to you for hearing the wise messages of your body and for listening to them.

The timing of the costume stores and the holiday decorations have absolutely nothing to do with realities of nature but are instead on a cycle of capitalism. I’ve been studying economics lately. Money, I hear, is like spring grass to you all. And it can too often run the show. Always question the motives of what you see. As a prey animal and a being who must survive according the the rules of the natural world, it is essential for us to stay alert and assess our surroundings. If something doesn’t feel right to us, we must pay attention to that instinct and examine. It does keep us quite busy. And, it keeps us alive!

My experience with people is that you guys do a bit of auto-pilot in your lives. I bet that a lot of people walk the aisles of their local big box store and just start putting autumn decorations in their carts without considering the truth of today, the present moment. Today, I feel like enjoying summer activities because the day calls for it, the air warm, the sun still staying bright into the late afternoon. That was your truth and it didn’t match the messages the stores were giving you about how you should lead your life.

Too often, you aren’t aware. Your alert systems and your connection to your instincts is dull or even numb. Succumbing to external pressure without even realizing it is actually pretty damn dangerous. When those stores fill up with junk and you start buying it, isn’t it possible that you are listening to social pressure more than you are listening to the inner wisdom of you human animal? And if you are doing it with this, isn’t it likely that you are ignoring your present needs in other areas of your life? Aha! This seems important, doesn’t it?

The best advice I can offer is to start using your body as a tuning fork. Find ways to keep yourself awake to your body so you can hear what it has to say. Your human animal body is an untapped resource. So as you go about your day, talk to it, ask it questions, begin to make space for some dialogue. My guess is that your human animal will have you making some pretty wonderful changes and pushing back on practices and ways of life that actually don’t make much sense at all.

Love, Sally