Lessons from a Snake Master.

I was watching Austin Stevens Snake Master this morning on the Discovery channel as I tucked into my bowl of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat (mmmm!) and he was on one of his crazy quests in the Amazon Rain Forrest.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen this guy before but he is nuts – He is like “Steve Irwin” for grown ups!

In this episode he was making his way through the dense growth of the Amazon when he narrowly avoids a huge falling branch which crushes the camp he had set up a few metres away. Austin explains that more people are killed by falling branches in the Amazon each year than by snake bites. 

He then went onto explain that this falling of trees and branches was a natural process and that actually it was about creating life. You could stand there and be sad that a 100 year old tree had collapsed and caused enormous damaged to the surrounding area as it fell, but the gap that has been created allows the light to shine through so that the smaller saplings and vegetation can continue to grow stronger.

It got me thinking about two things that relates to life in general.

Firstly, you would think that snakes pose a bigger threat than huge branches. Sometime I guess we are that focused on the obvious dangers that we fail to keep our awareness open enough to notice what else is happening around us. 

Second, in the journey of life we will suffer loss of some kind –  maybe financial loss, emotional loss or even loss of things we own. It’s part of the system. Like the trees is the Amazon which fall to create space so the light can get in, our loss creates windows for the light to reach parts of us that have lived in the shade for too long and allow them to grow.

When my mother died tragically a few years ago, it tore my world apart. The sense of loss was unbearable but over time the light started to shine through and reach the parts of me that had been hidden for so long – the true passion that I felt about life began to grow. It was then that I decided to do what I do now, had she still be alive perhaps that passion would not have been ignited.