Talk and Tales from Coco, Optimist in Charge at The Shiny Butter Blog
Dare to feel good
Might be the same squirrel!
Shiny greetings, Reader,
When I walked to the end of the driveway this morning to retrieve the trash can I saw a squirrel sitting perfectly still by the hedges.
Still as a stone.
I could tell the squirrel could see me out of its peripheral vision, and I wished I'd had my phone with me to get a picture. But alas, it was a phone-less moment.
I approached the squirrel a little... gently, quietly, saying hello and good morning. The squirrel didn't flinch... at first. Then it scooted away by a few feet and stood still again. It didn't seem awfully alarmed by me, just cautious.
I spoke a little more, the squirrel's eyes darted toward me briefly, and then it scooted up our pecan tree. But honestly, the squirrel didn't act terrified. Maybe I'm being a ditz, but I think two of us had a moment.
And maybe we did.
After all, energy is energy.
After all, we humans share the planet with not only each other, but with wildlife, plants, and all of nature.
And energy is energy.
Of course!
We learned a long time ago that we can influence our house plants by talking to them.
And we know well by now that we can influence a glass of water simply by sending mental messages to it. Not even words spoken aloud! This is documented. It's google-able.
So of course I can stand at a distance from a squirrel and relax my energy and feel slightly connected in a mammal-to-mammal, earth-resident-to-earth-resident, soul-to-soul way.
Of course I can.
Of course any of us can do this.
And of course any one of us can walk into our yard or garden or park nearby and feel very, very connected to the natural world surrounding us, if not to the individual birds and squirrels and insects, too.
My sweetheart's extended family shares a home on a river, and every time my sweetheart goes near that river her heart does flips. It lights up. I've seen this! I've felt this when I'm with her.
This is the connection we have with not only our home, but with the natural world.
I feel the same way when I'm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia—my heart does flips. Something deeply rooted in me responds to that place.
A surprise blessing
I was behind a truck at a light yesterday—a giant truck hauling a giant tree cut into sections—that the company whose name was on the truck had cut down.
I didn't know the circumstances of the tree's removal, other than the fact that a regional bypass project is the reason for a massive amount of trees being removed. This was probably somehow related.
As I sat at the stoplight behind that truck, I spoke a few words energetically to the tree, soul to soul.
And then, to my own surprise, I sent a gentle blessing to the truck and the company—a company I've shot angry eyes at more than many times for all the large, old-growth, stunning, healthy and un-diseased trees they've removed in my area—and apparently will continue to remove.
I'm not sure why I did that.
They don't need my blessing on such destructive, deceptive ("that tree is diseased—we can take it down for you"), nature-adverse acts. But I guess something inside me figured the energy of a blessing would be put to good use, not ill use.
Or worse, turn a simple, spontaneous blessing into a curse or something. That wouldn't make any sense at all.
Back to the squirrel
We're all in this together, you know, even us and the squirrels in our yard.
We beings are all traveling together on this orbiting island home we share.
On a soul level we have deep knowledge of this, yet in our physical experience as humans inhabiting the earth, we know maybe 1% of what there is to know. If that much.
We're living in the middle of a literal tug of war (to say the least!) between the brains-and-brawn side of human beings and the heart-and-soul side of human beings.
The brains and brawn side has us convinced that this is largely who we are—and that our "soft" side is merely a nice feature; an accessory like jewelry.
Yet, we know that even though we can't touch it or lift it or hurl it at someone like a rock, the heart-and-soul side of us is who we actually are on a grand, grand, beyond-the-physical-plane scale.
It's like when we hear that the human body is something like 60% water—we're a little confused since the body certainly doesn't look or feel that... wet.
And so it is that this human life feels so very physical, so solid to the touch, yet is actually more energy than matter.
By a long shot.
And with all our research and discoveries, if we were honest we'd see how much we don't know, not how smart we are for finding the clues we've uncovered so far.
Thus we do things like share a moment with a squirrel in the yard yet can't fully explain why we feel compelled to do that.
Heart and soul
If there were any way to collect on a bet like this, I'd go all in on the fact that we're overconfident (arrogant, even) about what we (think we) know about this existence...
and that when we each wrap up our physical journey and return to the spirit world (or "where"ever it is we come from and return to), we'll laugh and laugh and laugh some more at our naivete.
At our presumptions...
at what we called knowledge that was unaccompanied by, well, the energy of love...
the heart and soul of it all.
It's what connects all of this we're experiencing together, even when we're literally up in arms against each other.
We really don't know the half of it. Or half of half.
We really don't know what it is that makes us lock souls with a squirrel in the yard or our cat or our dog or a beautiful horse or a tree or a houseplant or a place that means so much to us.
But we know it's there.
And this is why we hold out hope one day after another in this life. It's the deep thing we feel.
The tug of war isn't about the us-and-them or the I'm-right-they're-wrong stuff. It's not about politics or ideals or religion or justice.
Or at least I don't think so.
It's the thing inside us as one human body trying to be a whole energetic being rather than an incomplete, brain-and-brawn driven being.
Yes, that's what I felt when that squirrel and I shared a moment this morning.
That's energy for you. Everything is energy, and we're all in this together, rough going and all.
Thanks for being on the other side of the screen today
Stay peaceful, curious, and kind.
And shine on, my friend,
Coco
p.s. I'd be a very poor optimist if I didn't believe that things are redeemable, fixable, and figure-out-able, even when something looks like a lost cause, such as how we humans seem on this earth right now.
I really do believe that we can direct our energy and create good in the world. As a collective and as individuals.
I believe we can direct our energy and create good in our self, which is good for the world.
Wow, this I really do believe—that what we do for our self is what we do for the world.
Contact me for private, one:one coaching: Coco@ShinyButter.com, or go to CocoCockerille.com.
Let's talk about the energy you want to create in your life... and in the world.
Every email I send you is a one-of-a-kind, written-by-just-me-and-my-own-brain-power original.
I do not use AI for writing.
My aim in all my writing is to be as real, human, and fully alive as possible—and to share my very real, human, fully alive experience with my readers and audience.
I love me some shiny things, but with all of AI's promises and assurances, I still choose the slow, hands-on, manual, analog, self-reliant, old-school, defiantly non-plagiarized path of writing—without asking any form of AI for ideas, inspiration, help, or even proofreading and grammar correction (because I've discovered it's not as good or "intuitive" as it claims to be at those, either).
[Also, as of 5/6/25 all photos are my own (not stock) unless otherwise stated.]
