Vachon Imagined

Our house was once treated for mice.

They were in the basement, so we placed a frequency device down there designed to repel them. They could hear it—or more accurately, they could sense it. Their nature responded to something we could not see.

What unsettled me most was when the technician explained that we needed to act quickly. If the mice remained, snakes could eventually sense their presence, enter the house, and follow them because they were drawn by their own nature.

My immediate thought was not reasonable.

I wanted to leave.

I wanted to abandon the house entirely, fill it with dynamite, and let it burn.

Remove the threat.

Destroy the source.

Make sure it could never return.

But isn’t this what humans often do?

We rely on termination to end what causes us pain.

A painful relationship? Leave the person.

A toxic workplace? Leave the job.

A difficult memory? Bury it.

A painful truth? Deny it.

We are incredibly skilled at removing what disturbs us. What we are not always skilled at is questioning whether our perception is complete.

Sometimes the person who made us feel abandoned did not create the wound. They revealed where the wound already existed.

The experience was already within us.

Love did not create it.

Love made it visible.

Human connection did not invent our suffering.

It brought it into awareness.

So we build walls. We create distance. We erect monuments to our anger. We condemn leaders, institutions, and entire groups of people. We search for something outside ourselves to destroy, believing that if we eliminate the source, we will finally be free.

But we cannot outrun what is not trying to kill us.

What if the thing we fear is not pursuing our destruction, but calling us toward awakening?

It follows us because it belongs to us.

Love does not abandon us. It reveals us. It searches the hidden places, enters the forgotten rooms, and finds what we have buried.

Just as the snake finds the mouse through its senses, we find ourselves through ours.

Through our fear.

Through our pain.

Through our longing.

Through our humanity.

And when we stop trying to destroy what is asking to be understood, we discover surrender.

Not surrender as defeat.

Surrender as coming home.

The thing we were running from was the very thing trying to lead us back to ourselves.