Walking With The Tiger

A path to equanimity & recovery.

When my son was a younger boy, I taught him a way to deal with big feelings. I told him that anger, fear, frustration, and jealousy are a tiger that lives inside him. A tiger that has his back.

The tiger is powerful. It is his.
It is his protector. His fortress. His “baseball ready.”
His superpower, resting deep beneath the surface, waiting to make him strong. It would be there to help him fight and stand up for himself when he needed it.

But the tiger is also blind.
A big, uncontrollable animal that tears through everything in its path.

So while it has his back, it can also cause real harm when it’s on the loose.

I tell him he can talk to his tiger, keep it calm.
But the tiger only speaks one language: breath.

Bring all your attention to your breathing, and the tiger comes under control.
The deeper and lower the breath, the more authority he has.

I love this analogy.
And he does too.

He made a book about it.

It came as a surprise when this analogy came back around to me.

When I began going to recovery meetings, I started hearing the term of learning to walk with the tiger.

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I wrote this on one of those days where the tiger’s got me by the leg.

The kind where the itch is real.
Where my hand wants to reach for Instagram and scroll until my eyes burn.
Where distraction feels invigorating.

Thank God for the OPAL app. I bought it by accident, thinking I was just starting the free trial. Now it locks me out all day. I have to beg it to let me back in.

It lets me back in once. Then I’m out again.
It slowed me down just enough to rethink it all.

I sit with it.
I eat.
I don’t roll a joint.
I don’t phone a friend.
I don’t disappear into the feed.

I just sit there.
I breathe.

As I switch from sitting to walking on my wooden floor.

Eventually, the pull loosens. The tiger loosens his grip.
It doesn’t leave, but it sits with me. It walks with me.

Then I get back to work.
And so does the tiger.

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