When Selfishness Breaks Open

As we turn away from individualism, what comes next?

Photo by Geranimo on Unsplash

I’m not sure exactly how the jaguar thing started. I don’t know why it was jaguars, can’t think of any rhyme or reason to it. I just know that it was, and now, here we are.

I get this thing sometimes — maybe you get it, too — where certain images or words start coming up again and again in my awareness. I’ll hear the word somewhere, once, and notice it in a way that feels… unusual. Then, I start seeing it everywhere.

Often, these synchronicities arise and fall as nothing more to me than tricks of the light, random psychological tics that catch my attention before proving meaningless. But every now and then, if I look just right, they seem to have more substance.

This is the story of once such psychological mirage, one that had a lesson for me, a lesson I think I’m meant to share with you.

For months, the thing was jaguars. They kept getting mentioned in books I read or stories I heard; I kept seeing images of them, dreaming about them at night. I’ve never seen a jaguar in person, not even at the zoo, and nothing the Internet could tell me about “the symbolic meaning of jaguars” pointed me in any direction that made sense. Then, one night as I was falling asleep, I found myself half-dreaming of a jaguar…