I like Chinese food. I hate the placemats in Chinese restaurants. No matter how many times I study them, they always tell me that I am a rat.
The placemats show the 12 years of the Chinese Zodiac.
I look at all the other years and wish I could be a Tiger or a Rabbit.
Dragon would be cool!
I’d settle for Pig.
Snake is a toss-up with Rat. Although I can think of more positive things about snakes.
No matter how many times I eat Chinese, the news is always the same. I am a Rat. To me the Rat represents all that is unlovely, unloving and unlovable in me.
Astrology may be bunk, but it points to the truth that life has certain “givens.” The Native American poet, Joy Harjo, now the U.S. Poet Laureate, wrote, “Remember the sky that you were born under.” People who live close to nature notice the way the stars shine the night a baby is born. Two billion Christians remember a star shining over Bethlehem one night long ago.
If I count the year I was born, the Year of the Rat has come around for the seventh time. If I look at myself at 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and now, I see so many changes in those 12 year cycles, for example:
- At 12, I was a farm boy.
- At 24, I was young man with a wife, a baby, and a church.
- In the past 12 years, both my parents died. For the first time, I left a church smaller than it was when I arrived. I retired. We moved to New York City.
I look in the mirror and compare what I see with snapshots taken from those other cycles of the Zodiac. Where did the hair go? How did what hair I have left turn so white when it started so black? Where did the wrinkles come from?
In some ways, what remains the same is more mysterious than what has changed.
How can I be the same person now that I was at 12? What is this mystery that I call my “self?”
I still read and then pontificate about what I’ve learned. I still laugh out loud at jokes other people don’t seem to get. But there are other things that also persist. All of them are part of the rat.
The Rat represents all those parts of me that I have tried to shut out, poison, or trap. I can’t kill it. Most of the time the Rat just hides in the shadows. But he is there. He is always there.
In this 7th Year of the Rat, I look back and see that there is not much I can do about my past failures and limitations. The rat-like genes that gnawed away the cilia inside my cochlea now may be gnawing at my bones and my lungs.
My life is my life. It is a combination of the choices I made and things that were built in to my life from conception. But oddly, that empowers me to make the best of what my life is, Rat and all.
Accepting the unlovely Rat in me also helps me see that the Rat can be “quick-witted, resourceful, and versatile” at times.
Maybe that’s why the Chinese astrologers also say that the Rat is kind. Once a Rat accepts and feels compassion for himself, he can care for other fallible human beings.
After all, if you can love a Rat, you can love anybody.
Roger, this is so wise. I love it.
Roger, this is great! I love that you’re a rat and that rats, like you, are quick witted, resourceful and versatile. And you’re the kindest rat we know. Is Jacquie a rat too? 😘🐭
In some ways, what remains the same is more mysterious than what has changed.
This is insightful and deep. I have a poem that speaks of a spider that lives in my head just behind my right ear. The spider is my rat spirit.
Well done my friend.
Thanks Ralph!
I feel like I’m still learning to love myself even after all these years. Therapists have confirmed that. But I like to think that, as another Rat, I am becoming more kind. Working at the monastery and observing the monks has worked this change.
I wondered how other people born that year would react.
I don’t know about all this rat business, but the smallness of the church from which you retired had nothing to do with you as pastor. In fact, if not for your excellence, the church might not even exist today. I know it would have had two fewer parishioners.
Fear not in your retirement.
That you can describe yourself as a Rat – is an example of one of your most endearing traits: your humility.
And it is interesting to follow you as you navigate this maze called Life.
We miss you and your bride..
Always good to see your writing and to think of you.